Maine Owl

President Bush: The Iraqis launched a surge of their own.

In the fall of 2006, Sunni tribal leaders grew tired of al Qaeda's brutality and started a popular uprising called the Anbar Awakening. Over the past year, similar movements have spread across the country.

Today, the grassroots surge includes more than 80,000 Iraqi citizens who are fighting the terrorists.

The government in Baghdad has stepped forward as well, adding more than 100,000 new Iraqi soldiers and police during the past year.

While the enemy is still dangerous and more work remains, the American and Iraqi surges have achieved results few of us could have imagined just one year ago. ... (APPLAUSE)

DAHR JAMAIL: Well, the surge and what is very interesting too, is not only do we have a US surge according to Mr. Bush, we have an Iraqi surge, two Iraqi surges actually. The first of which he mentioned in his talk last night, the concerned citizens or the awakening groups. It is really interesting that the same time last year as Mr. Bush was happily doing during his speech, comparing where were we last year to this year, well last year, these same people, these concerned local citizens according to the US military were called Al Qaeda or insurgents or terrorists. And now that there are 80,000 of them on US payroll, they’re concerned citizens and they’re an Iraqi surge. These same people, as we look at the situation on the ground, this is causing a deepening of the political divisions in the country. US backed President Nouri Al-Maliki has been vehemently opposed to this concerned citizens group backed by the US military in Iraq. These people, most of which are former resistance fighters, because they are now a threat to the Iraqi government forces. So that is causing huge problems on the ground in Iraq today. If we look at the situation the military recently announced within the last month that there was a sevenfold increase in the use of air power last year. So these are some of the reasons why right now there are fewer US troops dying but in reality, they’re paying off resistance fighters to stand down.