MG Rick Lynch Tells You What You Need To Know

Just the facts!

Charleston Dail Mail: The facts

Most provinces of Iraq are not paralyzed by violence

As some senators craft measures to undercut the president — without having to explain what they would do in his place — Americans should follow information about the situation in Iraq.

Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, a spokesman for the U.S. military in Baghdad, went over the facts this week:
Iraq suffers 75 attacks a day, a level that has stayed the same since August. Major violence is confined largely to three of the nation’s 18 provinces.

“Seventy-five percent of the attacks still take place in Baghdad, al-Anbar or Salaheddin (provinces),” he said. “And in the other 15 provinces, they all averaged less than six attacks a day, and 12 of those provinces averaged less than two attacks a day.”

Steven R. Hurst of the Associated Press noted that Lynch’s list omitted Diyala Province, where insurgents recently stormed a jail, freed 33 prisoners, and killed 20 police.

But Hurst also wrote that “the nature of the violence in the country has shifted from
assaults on American troops to battles rooted in sectarian conflict between Sunni and Shiite Muslims.”

Yes, there has been a spike in what Lynch called “ethnic-sectarian incidents,” and they are horrendous.

But as Lynch put it: “There is not widespread violence across Iraq. There is not.”

War is hell. But abandoning people to it would not be any prettier