Even the Republican leadership in Congress is warning that if the situation has not markedly improved by, oh, September?  October maybe?--then they, too, will take another look at Bush's plan for "victory" in Iraq. 

It's an ominous warning to their fearless leader that if he doesn't prove his case by then, many of their moderate members will start siding with the Democrats; maybe even enough to over-ride a veto, heaven forbid. 

The signs are already there that facts are being suppressed, modest gains over-hyped, and unfounded claims that are difficult to prove wrong are being made to demonstrate that ALREADY we're making measurable progress with our shiny new general, Petraeus. 

It's the new Iraq war novel, due out this fall with a full court press. 

Now, let me start by saying, up-front, that I do not wish for failure in Iraq.  My son and nephew did five brutal, horrific tours in the Anbar province with the Marines, and I have another nephew in Baghdad as we speak, putting his life on the line every day to make this new plan work. 

I want their enormous sacrifices to COUNT.  I want them to feel, at the end of the day, that the deaths and horrible injuries of their buddies will not have been a waste and that the psychic cost taken out of their souls will not have been in vain. 

So I do not take away anything from what little positive news that really DOES come out of Iraq.  I see some signs for hope in some parts of the country, but like everything else in hell, every gain comes with a shadow hanging over it.   

You can build a nice new school, for example, but what if parents are afraid to send their children?  You can't just brag about the school as a major success, not until the children are romping in the playground and the teachers watching with laughter in their eyes and not terror. 

What I'm saying is that our guys in Iraq have accomplished some progress in some areas and they deserve our support and appreciation for what that progress cost them--and our nation--in blood and treasure.  But to exaggerate those successes, leaving out very real problems attached to them, or to make stuff up to fit the latest spin-cycle out of Washington, is the gravest form of disrespect you can give our  men and women in uniform. 

So.  Here's how to tell fiction from true-crime in Iraq. 

Back when I was plotting my novels, I wanted to take a fictional scenario that could actually HAPPEN--something, in other words, that was PLAUSIBLE and BELIEVABLE, and turn it into a rip-roaring page-turner. 

The primary responsibility a novelist has is to provoke the reader into suspension of disbelief.  You want them to forget that what they are reading is fiction.  You want them to be drawn into your make-believe world so completely that they root for the good guys and fear the bad guys.  You want that world to be so real to them that they even feel fear, themselves, when reading an exciting scene.  Maybe weep a tear at a sad scene.  Feel great at the end. 

In order to do this, your fictional world has got to be grounded in FACT.   

That means that, with thrillers anyway, such things as forensic science, police procedure, criminal law--as well as the psychopathology of your bad guys has to be BELIEVABLE. 

To that end, I always spent a good six months researching the backgrounds of my stories.  I traveled to the city where my story would be set, met the kinds of police officers or investigators who would be handling my fictional crime, hung out with them, went out on patrol or to investigate a case with them, interviewed them at length, brainstormed with them.  I also consulted experts in psychiatry so that my bad-guy pathologies would be believable. 

As I completed each chapter, I would send them to my experts to check for technical accuracy.  My goal was to construct the kind of story that even a cop would enjoy reading.   

On the other hand, this WAS fiction, so I could take some license.  For instance, I could have a detective or F.B.I. agent go out of the normal bounds of what was permissible for a real investigator to do, in order to better serve the story. 

If, for example, a TEAM of investigators would normally handle a case, I would give most of those responsibilities, sometimes, to ONE investigator, so that I could set up the classic showdown between good guy and bad guy at the end. 

Sometimes I'd have a civilian who would have cooperation from an investigator that exceeded the bounds of what would be permissible normally, because it WOULD SERVE THE STORY. 

My experts always understood this and even enjoyed it, as long as I kept within certain bounds that otherwise would simply NOT BE BELIEVED. 

Now, when I wrote a true-crime, Faces of Evil, all those rules changed, because these were real cases, with real investigators, at a real police department.  In that case, the Houston PD forensic sketch artist, Lois Gibson, and I collaborated on a book about her inspirational life and some of the sensational cases that her drawings had helped investigators to solve. 

It is to Lois's credit that she chose not to try and take all the credit.  She contacted all the detectives who had worked various cases and set up meetings and interviews with me.  After reading crime reports in the news as well as case files from investigators, interviewing them, and sending them the chapters to check over, we were able to reconstruct each case from the ground up. 

But because these were real cases involving real victims and real perpetrators, we had to get permission from each living victim whom we quoted, and we had to procure court documents on the adjudication of each case. 

In other words, everything that went on in our depiction of a true crime had to be DOCUMENTED. 

We couldn't just make a sweeping claim that could not be backed up by fact. 

We could not make generalizations about what happened--we were constricted by trial transcripts and so on to reconstruct our crimes.  In the parts of each chapter that dealt with Lois's memory of a witness's sketch session with her, we went with her memories and sometimes with the memories of those witnesses who allowed themselves to be interviewed.   

But when we ventured outside her cozy HPD office and into court, or the crime scene, or the investigator's thoughts, all of that had to be DOCUMENTED. 

We did this not just in the name of accuracy, but to protect the principles from lawsuits. 

Still, it is a source of real pride to both me and Lois that the investigators whose cases were included in our book were very pleased with how we had handled their cases, and proud to have been included in the process. 

So.  That said.  Let me take you through a couple of paragraphs of an op-ed that appeared in the Sunday, May 6 New York Times, and written by Frederick W. Kagan, a former military history professor from West Point who was the architect of the so-called "troop surge." 

After the greatest minds in our country put together an exhaustive study of what would be the best course of action in Iraq--the Iraq Study Group--which was greeted with great acclaim and respected on both sides of the aisle, the commander-in-chief chose to reject its suggestions outright and side with Kagan, who insisted that sending more troops into the quicksand would be a better idea. 

So now that violence continues in Baghdad and all through Iraq and the Democrats are fighting to bring the troops home and the Republicans are seeing the rope they've been clinging to fashioned into a hangman's noose, Kagan--and the administration--have a vested interest in proving that he really was right all along. 

In, "Plan B?  Let's Give Plan A Some Time First," Kagan begins to hype the "successes" that have supposedly resulted from the troop "surge":  

"The strategy now under way in Iraq…will change the situation significantly, whether or not it succeeds in its aims. 

"In fact, it has already done so, and for the better:  the rebel Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr has apparently fled to Iran; American and Iraqi forces have killed or captured more than 700 key leaders and allies of his Mahdi Army, causing the movement to fragment; sectarian killings in Baghdad in April were about one-third of the level in December. 

"There have been gains outside the capitol as well.  Nearly all of the two dozen or so major tribal leaders in Anbar Province have joined the new Anbar Salvation Council, which is committed to fighting al Qaeda and other foreign terrorists… 

"…In a 180-degree turnaround, Mr. Maliki has now permitted repeated strikes against senior Shiite leaders and sweeps of Shiite neighborhoods; and the government has publicly vowed to expel Shiite squatters from the houses of displaced Sunnis…"

WOW.  That is REALLY impressive. 

From the sounds of it, why, I'd say it looks like we've reached a real turning point--(in fiction, we call it the "crises that leads to the denoument")--and we will, in time, owe it all to the genius of Kagan and Bush's plan!   

We just might get that happy ending after all! 

This is a book I wanna read! 

It lacks only one thing that you need in a true story:  documentation. 

This is what you do in fiction:  You take a PLAUSIBLE scenario--a grain of truth--and you embellish it and manipulate it in such a way that it serves your story. 

You count on your readership to suspend their disbelief.  We saw a great deal of this disbelief-suspension in the days leading up to the invasion. 

And anyone who dared point out the real facts was attacked.  This would be commensurate with, say, beating up literary critics for not liking your book, or stalking shoppers at a book store and attacking anyone who refuses to buy your book. 

Expect that to happen again. 

Back to the happy-ending scenario painted by Kagan in this lovely story. 

(1)  Has al-Sadr FLED…Or is he just lying low, biding his time?  One of the key mistakes made by this administration both THEN and NOW is insisting on thinking like Americans rather than Arabs when dealing with the murky world of the Middle East. 

If there is one thing the Arab mindset has, it is infinite patience. 

(2)  Those "key leaders" who were killed or captured that Kagan talks about--there is a backstory to that, too.   

First of all, there is a very real possibility that al-Sadr has stepped back to allow those Mahdi Army leaders to be arrested WHO POSE A THREAT TO HIM.  His followers have ballooned into the tens of thousands throughout the country, and he has not always been in complete control of various militia factions.  It behooves his purposes to allow some of them to be arrested. 

And second,  Kagan flat-out neglects to mention that, on more than one occasion, some of those "key leaders" have, a couple of days after the arrest, been let out of jail.  So if, in the police dragnet, some of al-Sadr's leaders whom he does NOT want to be jailed get scooped up in the net…they mysteriously go free later.   

This has been a source of immense frustration to American troops on the ground, but Kagan leaves out that little fact. 

You can do that, in fiction, if it serves the story. 

(3)  It is absolutely disingenuous to make the claim Kagan makes about "sectarian killings in Baghdad in April were about one-third the level in December." 

("Disingenuous" is a writerly way of saying, he pretty much lied.) 

First of all, we don't know HOW many people have died in Baghdad in April because the al-Maliki government refuses to release casualty figures for the first time since the beginning of the war. 

Second, the U.S. Army has admitted that they ARE NOT COUNTING the body counts from car bombs which have occurred in Baghdad and outlying provinces, with dozens if not hundreds killed.   

Kagan is well aware of this fact, and so carefully refers to "sectarian killings" which, in the media, tends to refer to Shiite militia kidnappings and killings, which are down because al-Sadr ordered them to lie low, too. 

So yeah, those are down, but we don't know whether it's "one-third."  We just don't know, and for him to make such a broad sweeping claim that they are is pure FICTION. 

(4)  It is true that Sunni tribal leaders in the Anbar province have, indeed, offered to help the Americans to fight al-Qaeda because they disapprove of the killing of innocent Muslims and they know they're in a power struggle for control over the region. 

This is one of those things that I think the Marines and soldiers fighting in that province can be proud of. 

However. 

As with all things Arab, it's not that simple.  This uneasy alliance may not last, and why not, you ask? 

Because these same tribal leaders have been BEGGING the al-Maliki government to send reconstruction aid to the beleaguered province, to help restore water, electricity, and other simple services, and so far, al-Maliki has refused. 

The Anbar is Sunni, after all.  And the so-called "unity" government that Bush keeps touting is basically Shiite.  Sunni cabinet ministers have been shut out of the government so badly that they're threatening to quit, and Sunni areas are being completely ignored, unless of course, the government encourages the Americans to build a wall around them. 

If al-Maliki continues to ignore the tribal leaders' requests, he runs the risk of driving them straight back into the arms of the terrorists.  It's up to him, not to the Americans, no matter how many troops we send over there. 

(5)  Yes, the government has publicly vowed to expel Shiite squatters from Sunni homes in mixed neighborhoods and encouraged the Sunni families to return. 

But when they do return, Shiite police officers, acting with their militias under cover of darkness or sometimes in broad daylight, are killing them. 

So not many have taken up the government on its generous offer--a fact politely ignored in Kagan's fictional account of happy life in Baghdad. 

(6)  Even if a joint Iraqi police/American soldier outpost is located on every corner in Baghdad, and even if such a show of martial law does indeed lower the level of violence in Baghdad, the truth is that the violence has EXPLODED in the outer areas surrounding Baghdad. 

It's gotten so bad in the Diyala province, for example, that Petraeus has already had to pull out TWO BRIGADES of American troops from Baghdad, which he sent to the Diyala.  At the same time, MORE TROOPS WILL BE SENT TO IRAQ WHO WERE NOT SCHEDULED TO GO THERE in order to take the places of the troops sent to calm outer areas. 

And if those troops to calm those areas, where will the bad guys go then?  They're not going to leave Iraq.  They are simply going to shift around, eluding the Americans, while they continue to kill and destroy. 

It's like standing in the middle of a gigantic red ant bed, and doing your best to stomp out all the swarming ants.  "If only I had more boots!" you shout.  "Give me more time!  Give me more boots!  I know I can stomp out all these ants!" 

Which brings me to one tiny fact that Kagan did not mention, and that is the skyrocketing rate of American dead and injured because of this "surge." 

They keep shrugging that off, saying, Oh yeah, we expected that.   

But here's my point: If our men and women are dying, and keep dying, and keep coming home maimed, facing lives and families destroyed…for yet another Bush administration FICTION…Well, in the final analysis…that would be the true crime.