MYTH: The U.S. is making no progress in defeating the insurgency in Iraq.

QUOTE: "I'm absolutely convinced that we're making no progress at all, and I've been complaining for two years that there's an overly optimistic--an illusionary process going on here." --Rep. John Murtha on "Meet the Press," November 20, 2005

REALITY: The U.S.-led coalition and the Iraqi government have made substantial progress in eliminating insurgent strongholds in Fallujah, Mosul, Najaf, Samara, and Tal Afar, and in many smaller towns in the western Anbar province along the Syrian border. Most of Iraq is secure from major guerrilla attacks, particularly the predominantly Shiite south and the predominantly Kurdish north, which actively support the Iraqi government. Most insurgent attacks are mounted in the heavily Sunni Arab central and western portions of Iraq, although small numbers of insurgents continue to launch terrorist attacks, including suicide bombings at soft targets, throughout the country. Outside of Iraq's Sunni heartland, which benefited the most from Saddam Hussein's Sunni-dominated regime, the insurgents lack popular support. Their terrorist strategy has failed to intimidate Iraqi Shiites, Kurds, Turcomans, and Assyrians, who altogether comprise more than 80 percent of Iraq's population.

The Iraqi army and police forces are growing larger, better-trained, and more effective. The Iraqi Army and security forces grew from just 1 operational battalion in July 2004 to more than 120 today. Over 200,000 trained and equipped Iraqis are now playing an increasingly active role in rooting out insurgents. While only one battalion is rated at the U.S. Army category "Level One," about 40 are at "Level Two." Level 2 battalions are capable of fighting "with some support"--usually just logistics and air/artillery support--from American forces. These units patrol their own areas of operations, relieving U.S. troops to perform other duties. The cities of Najaf and Mosul are now patrolled exclusively by Iraqi security forces, as are large portions of Baghdad.

There are now six police academies in Iraq and one in Jordan training 3,500 Iraqi police every ten weeks. Today the vast majority of Iraqi police and army recruits are trained by Iraqis, not Americans, the result of systematic efforts to "train the trainers." Since the January 30th elections, no Iraqi police stations have been abandoned under attack, as once happened frequently, because police have fiercely resisted attacks even when outnumbered and outgunned, confident that help would come from 13 provincial SWAT teams and coalition forces.

Unlike during several military offensives in 2004, Iraqi security forces now are strong enough to garrison and control cleared areas, making the Bush Administration's recent adoption of a "clear, hold, and build" security strategy possible. Iraqi forces were able to take a leading role in the successful September 2005 offensive at Tal Afar, which involved 11 Iraqi and 5 Coalition battalions.

The increasing effectiveness of the Iraqi security forces has inspired optimism among the Iraqi people. This is reflected in the growing number of intelligence tips from Iraqi civilians. In March 2005, Iraqi and coalition forces received 483 intelligence tips from Iraqi citizens. This figure rose to 3,300 in August, and to more than 4,700 in September. According to a survey from early November, 71 percent of respondents believed that the Iraqi security forces are winning the war against the insurgents, while only 9 percent believed they are losing. The data was gathered from Iraqi callers who were passing intelligence tips to the Iraqi National Tips Line, which was created to provide Iraqis with a safe and anonymous means of passing on information about insurgent activity to their own government.

MYTH: The U.S. is making little or no political progress in Iraq.

QUOTE: "It is surely a joke of history that even as the White House sells this weekend's constitutional referendum as yet another 'victory' for democracy in Iraq, we still don't know the whole story of how our own democracy was hijacked on the way to war." --Frank Rich, "It's Bush-Cheney, not Rove-Libby," New York Times, October 16, 2005

REALITY: Iraq has made remarkably rapid progress in establishing the foundations of a democratic political system after more than three decades of dictatorship. Pessimistic critics of U.S. policy have been repeatedly wrong in predicting that Iraqis would not be ready for the June 2004 transfer of sovereignty, the January 2005 transitional government elections, the writing and approval of a constitution by October 2005, and the December 15 elections that will create a government that will lead Iraq for the next four years.

The insurgents' inability to block the January elections, combined with a simmering resentment of their indiscriminate violence, has led many Sunni Arabs to reconsider their boycott of the political process. Even the Association of Muslim Scholars, an anti-American group, has called for Sunni Arabs to join the Iraqi security services. The insurgents' political base is weakening as it becomes clear that they are opposed not just to the American presence, but also to the elected government.

Despite terrorist attacks and threats of intimidation, 8.5 million Iraqis voted in the January elections; almost 10 million voted in the October referendum on the new constitution; and turnout for the December 15 elections is expected to be even greater. Many Sunni Arabs realize that they erred in boycotting the January elections and are likely to vote in far larger numbers on December 15. More than 300 parties and coalitions have registered for the coming elections. Iraq's political process is messy and slow, like in other newly democratic political systems, but a new class of political leadership is emerging that, over time, can build a national consensus and drain away support for the insurgency, which is dominated by Islamic radicals and diehard loyalists to Saddam's hated regime.

Ironically, while Americans appear to be growing more pessimistic about Iraq's future, Iraqis are growing more optimistic. According to a poll conducted by Iraqis affiliated with Iraqi Universities, two-thirds of Iraqis believe they are better off now than under Saddam's dictatorship, and 82 percent are confident that they will be better off a year from now than they are today. An October survey conducted by the International Republican Institute found that 47 percent of Iraqis believed that their country is headed in the right direction, while 37 percent believed that it was going in the wrong direction. And 56 percent believed the situation would get better in six months, while only 16 percent believed the situation would get worse.

MYTH: The Bush Administration exaggerated the threat of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (WMD) to justify the war.

QUOTE: "In his march to war, President Bush exaggerated the threat to the American people." --Senator Edward Kennedy (D-MA), quoted in U.S. Fed News, November 10, 2005

REALITY: The Bush Administration acted on the basis of intelligence conclusions that were widely shared by previous administrations and foreign governments. President Bush was not the first American president to emphasize the long-term threat posed by Iraq. President Bill Clinton justified Operation Desert Fox, a three-day U.S. air offensive against Iraq, by invoking the threat posed by Iraqi WMD on December 16, 1998:

Heavy as they are, the costs of action must be weighed against the price of inaction. If Saddam defies the world and we fail to respond, we will face a far greater threat in the future. Saddam will strike again at his neighbors; he will make war on his own people. And mark my words he will develop weapons of mass destruction. He will deploy them, and he will use them.

Clinton's National Security Council advisor Sandy Berger warned of Saddam's threat in 1998, "He will use those weapons of mass destruction again, as he has ten times since 1983." Former Vice PresidentAl Gore said in 2002, "We know that [Saddam] has stored secret supplies of biological and chemical weapons throughout his country." CIA Director George Tenet, a holdover from the Clinton Administration, declared that the presence of Iraqi WMD was a "slam dunk." (For more on the political campaign to paint intelligence mistakes as conscious lies, see Norman Podhoretz's excellent article, "Who Is Lying About Iraq?," in the December issue of Commentary.)

The intelligence services of Britain, France, Russia, Germany, and Israel, among many others, held the same opinion. French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin explained his concerns to the UN Security Council on February 5, 2003: "Right now, our attention has to be focused as a priority on the biological and chemical domains. It is there that our presumptions about Iraq are the most significant. Regarding the chemical domain, we have evidence of its capacity to produce VX and Yperite. In the biological domain, the evidence suggests the possible possession of significant stocks of anthrax and botulism toxin, and possibly a production capability." The German Ambassador to the United States, Wolfgang Ischinger, said on NBC's "Today" of February 26, 2003, "I think all of our governments believe that Iraq has produced weapons of mass destruction and that we have to assume that they still have--that they continue to have weapons of mass destruction."

The Bush Administration may have been wrong about Iraqi WMD, but so were many other governments, few of which have been accused of lying. Moreover, three independent commissions have found that there is no evidence that the Bush Administration exaggerated the intelligence about Iraqi WMD.

In July 2004, the bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee issued a report with the following conclusions:

Conclusion 83. The Committee did not find any evidence that Administration officials attempted to coerce, influence or pressure analysts to change their judgments related to Iraq's weapons of mass destruction capabilities.