Juan Cole discusses how we’re “winning” in Iraq:

Edward Luce of FT argues that Iraq has faded as a campaign issue in the 08 presidential election. He attributes this lower profile for the issue to a drop in US military deaths in Iraq and to the rise of Iran as an issue instead.

But I think it is way too early to write Iraq off as an issue. In fact, given the current crisis at the northern border with Turkey, it is a little bit bizarre to suggest that things have all calmed down, either over there or domestically.

First of all, the assertion that US troop deaths have fallen is extremely misleading. In fact, It is only late October and already more US troops were killed in Iraq in 2007 than in all of 2006. Indeed, 2007 will almost certainly hold the record for the year of the most US military deaths since the war began.

According to the Iraq Casualties Site, these are the yearly numbers of death of US military personnel in Iraq:

Year US Deaths
2003 486
2004 849
2005 846
2006 822
2007 832

It is true that October is on track to be the least deadly for US troops since March of 2005.

It is, however, not clear why exactly US troop deaths have fallen so much in October. It is possible that they are being given few military missions and spending more time on base.

The reason people think – well, no, they don’t think – believe that deaths are down is precisely because the country has been lied to, successfully, by GEN Petraeus and his impossible–to-comprehend charts, and by the White House, which considers truth to be just a domestic enemy.

Iraq isn't "won." It's in the state of chaos Mr Cheney wants, and now it's time to do the same to Iran.

The chart above shows that 2007 is well on its way to being the deadliest year of the 21st century US empire.

Things aren’t improving on the edge of the empire, either.

Turkish troops are massing on the northern border of Iraq. The Turkish Parliament has passed a clone of the 2002 AUMF, telling the Turkish Army to “go clean out those damned terrorists.”

CIZRE, Turkey (Reuters) - Turkish warplanes and troops have attacked Kurdish rebels inside Iraq and forces were being built up on the border, but Ankara was holding back from any major strike for now, military sources said on Wednesday.

News of the sorties, between Sunday and Tuesday evening in which Turkish warplanes flew 20 km (13 miles) into Iraq and some 300 ground troops advanced about 10 km, put Baghdad under greater pressure to act against PKK rebels operating from the north of its territory.

The sources said 34 rebels of the outlawed PKK (Kurdistan Workers Party) had been killed in the sorties. All Turkish troops involved in the operations had returned to Turkey.

There was a time when flying your warplanes over the border of another country and attacking people there was considered an act of war. Crossing with troops in hot pursuit of rebels and terrorists is not usually unless the host country protests. The Iraq central government has agreed to cooperate with Turkey. They can’t do anything else because they’re incapable of resisting Turkish forces since their forces are still untrained in the fifth year of American occupation. Ironically, the most effective “Iraqi” forces are the Kurdish peshmera. GEN Petraeus moved some of those units into Baghdad during his “surge.”

I’d be leery of that Turkish claim of killing 34 PKK rebels because the best-trained Air Force in the world can’t distinguish between al Qaeda gunmen and 7 year old children when it bombs in Iraq. How could the Turkish Air Force do any better?

The Bu$h malAdministration has counseled (read: begged) Turkey to hold off for a few days in order to give diplomacy a chance to work on the problem. Best guess: they’ve asked the Germans or French to intervene; diplomacy is not something the US State Department does any more.