September 11, 2007 | By Nathaniel Ward

	Featured video Kirk Johnson, just returned from 12 months in Iraq, provides real perspective on General Petraeus’ and Ambassador Crocker’s Iraq testimony. More videos »

Straight from Baghdad: Heritage expert answers your questions

In memoriam

Six years ago today, 19 terrorists murdered nearly 3,000 innocent men, women and children in New York City, Washington, D.C. and Shanksville, PA. The victims and their families remain in our hearts and in our prayers.

Get answers to your questions on Iraq

Heritage expert Kirk Johnson, who just spent a year working at the U.S. Embassy in Iraq, has offered to take questions from Heritage Foundation members about the success of the surge and General David Petraeus’ report.

Submit your questions to Membership@Heritage.org with the subject line “Question for Kirk Johnson.”

Johnson will answer the most popular questions in the next MyHeritage.org e-mail.

Iraq update

Yesterday, Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker testified before Congress about Iraq’s conditions and the success to date of the new counterinsurgency surge strategy.

But even before the two men testified, liberals were on the attack to try and temper any good news. The radical left-wing group MoveOn.org even went so far as to run an ad suggesting the general would “betray us” if he testified that any progress had been achieved.

But has there been progress? Is violence lower today than before the surge of troops earlier this year? To answer these questions, Heritage experts have looked to the facts.

“When a broad measure of population security is used, total civilian casualties have dropped by about 20 percent between January and August 2007,” argues Heritage’s Kirk Johnson, who recently returned from a stint analyzing exactly these sorts of statistics at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad.

“Though some critics of U.S. Iraq strategy focus on rates of sectarian violence, broader measures present a better picture of the situation in Iraq,” Johnson writes. “These broader measures show that the ‘surge’ has been a success in reducing civilian casualties and improving overall security in Iraq.”

Take our poll: Has the surge improved security in Iraq?

In a panel discussion this Thursday at noon, Heritage Iraq scholar Jim Phillips will break down the two Iraq reports with outside experts Michèle Flournoy, Frederick Kagan and Michael O’Hanlon.

For all the latest on Iraq, visit Heritage’s Progress in Iraq page.

Fixing the subprime lending mess

The subprime lending crisis has dominated financial headlines in recent weeks, and big-government types are pushing for even more government as the solution. And even some conservatives are bowing to the pressure to provide politically popular quick fixes.

Last week, the Bush administration announced a proposal to alleviate the problems of the subprime lending crisis by “exclud[ing], on a temporary basis, cancelled mortgage debt from taxable income.” But Heritage economist J.D. Foster argues that this plan is misguided, whether it’s a short-term fix or a permanent change.

• Inappropriate temporary policy. “There is no reason to exempt an individual from this tax simply because he or she is joined by thousands of others and to restore the tax for a normal year when only a few hundred people must pay it.”  
• Inappropriate permanent policy. If made permanent, the plan would amount to “a tax-based mini-bailout for former borrowers who, it must be remembered, are in their current straights largely as a result of their own poor decisions.”

Instead, Foster proposes a tax reform that would treat cancelled debt not as taxable income but as a capital gain. “As such, it would be subject to, at most, a 15 percent tax rate,” he explains. In addition, Congress could provide temporary relief by “allowing homeowners to delay recognition of the gain for a year or two.”

In a separate paper, Heritage’s David John and Ron Utt lay out “measures [that] will help to avoid the possibility of a broad and costly bailout that provides unwarranted benefits to both borrowers and lenders, as well as the guilty, innocent, careless, foolish, and vulnerable alike.”

In other news

• As Americans remember the brutal September 11 terrorist attacks, terror ringleader Osama bin Laden has issued another threatening video. This should be a sobering reminder that we remain in a long war.
• Turkish police defused a massive bomb set in downtown Ankara today. And just last week, German police foiled a terrorist attack—based on American communications intercepts.
• Liberal candidates for president took part in the nation’s first-ever Spanish-language debate this weekend. The candidates spoke in English and their answers were translated for the Spanish-speaking Univision television audience.
• “Housing Market Slump Forces Couple to Open Brothel,” reads the headline on a New York-area news website. It’s understandable that changed financial circumstances could force a family to change its behavior, but it’s far from clear that opening a brothel was their only recourse, as the headline implies.
• A new scientific study purports to find that conservatives are less flexible and less willing to adapt to change than liberals. Economist Don Boudreaux points out, however, that conservatives typically favor free enterprise—and the “creative destruction” that entails—while liberals tend to favor restrictions on the economy that inhibit change.
• The Pentagon reports that recruitment for all services met or exceeded goals last month.

Coming up at Heritage

To attend these or any other Heritage Foundation events, RSVP at Heritage’s events website. Or you can watch these events live online at Heritage.org. All times are Eastern.

• On Thursday, September 13 at noon, scholars Michèle Flournoy, Frederick Kagan and Michael O’Hanlon join Heriatge’s Jim Phillips for a discussion of the Iraq progress reports from Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker.
• On Monday, September 17 at 11:30 a.m., Secretary of Commerce Carlos Gutierrez will inaugurate a series of lectures on the possibilities for post-Castro Cuba.

Nathaniel Ward is the Editor of MyHeritage.org—a website for members and supporters of The Heritage Foundation.

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