22 August 2007

Body Counts

Finally, U.S. leadership is announcing the numbers of terrorists killed in Iraq. Hugh Hewitt has the quote from President Bush's speech...

In Iraq, our troops are taking the fight to the extremists and radicals and murderers all throughout the country. Our troops have killed or captured an average of more than 1,500 al Qaeda terrorists and other extremists every month since January of this year. (Applause.) We're in the fight. Today our troops are carrying out a surge that is helping bring former Sunni insurgents into the fight against the extremists and radicals, into the fight against al Qaeda, into the fight against the enemy that would do us harm. They're clearing out the terrorists out of population centers, they're giving families in liberated Iraqi cities a look at a decent and hopeful life.


Doing the quick math, that comes to 10,500 dead terrorists since January (not counting any in August). If the Administration would continue to put these numbers out and if the media would publish them, there would be 2 effects: the American public would start to take heart that we're making progress and the surviving terrorists would become disheartened and lose hope (and maybe prospective terrorists would think twice when faced with the odds of quickly becoming part of the body count.

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