May was the least deadly month for US troops since the start of the war.
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Numbers via ICasualties
May was the least deadly month for US troops since the beginning of the War 5 years ago.
The Iraqi news organization Aswat Aliraq reported:
The CIA has declared that al-Qaeda is virtually defeated in Iraq and that the country is seeing its lowest level of violence for four years, according to the British newspaper The Times.
Nineteen US military personnel have died in Iraq this month, according to the Pentagon, making May the least deadly month for US troops since the beginning of the war, writes journalist Tim Reid in an article.
The deadliest month for US troops was May 2007, when 126 died as the insurgency in Baghdad raged.
The main reason for the drop in violence, which has also seen a big decline in Iraqi civilian deaths, is a ceasefire by the Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, whose forces have been directly confronted by US and Iraqi troops for over a month.
Rear Admiral Patrick Driscoll, a US spokesman, said violent incidents in Iraq were down 70 per cent since President Bush ordered a “surge” of 35,000 extra troops into the country last year. In April, 75 Iraqi civilians, soldiers and police were killed, the lowest level since November 2004.
The relative calm produced by the Shiite ceasefire has coincided with what the CIA is now calling the “near strategic defeat” of al-Qaeda in Iraq, and a growing rejection of the group’s murderous ideology across the Middle East.
Michael Hayden, the CIA director, speaking to the Washington Post, said the terrorist group was essentially defeated in Iraq and Saudi Arabia, and had suffered “significant setbacks globally as a lot of the Islamic world pushes back on their form of Islam”.
In a May 22, 2008, file photo Iraqis shop at a market in central Baghdad, Iraq. The U.S. military says violence across Iraq has reached its lowest level in more than four years, after successes this year in breaking al-Qaida and other Sunni insurgents’ hold in western Iraq and — more recently — government crackdowns in the southern city of Basra and northern city of Mosul. (AP Photo/Hadi Mizban/file)
Also today… France expressed a renewed commitment to Iraq as French Foreign Minister flew into Baghdad for a surprise visit.
This news is truly discomforting for Barack Obama and the Democrats who have expected America to lose this war in Iraq.
