Remember

George Bush did not start the war on terrorism.

This did:

Innocent Americans died as a result of this murderous and cowardly attack on the World Trade Center.

People like Jose Cardona who never returned to his family and friends after that fateful morning on September 11, 2001.

This is why we fight -- to prevent this from ever happening again.

A video note to Mr. Obama

This is a moving tribute to the absolute necessity of fighting for freedom.

[Via The Jawa Report.]

If this is failure, I don't wanna win!

Investor's Business Daily outlines some of the victories over terrorism that we've experienced -- just over the Memorial Day weekend:

• Iraqi forces ran al-Qaida terrorists out of Mosul, the terror organization's final urban stronghold. That victory reduces the killers to fringe areas with little public support, and a truncated capacity to recruit and strike terror in Iraq's cities. Al-Qaida has "never been closer to defeat than they are now," said Ryan Crocker, U.S. ambassador to Iraq.

Iraqi troops also cleaned out Basra and Sadr City, reducing any prospect for domestic insurgents to take power by force. Along with al-Qaida, these terrorists may try to continue, but the will is fading as the pressure is ratcheted up.

• In Colombia, Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos announced that Manuel "Sureshot" Marulanda, founder of the FARC Marxist terror group, died a hunted man in the jungle on March 26 as bombs rained down on him. Better still, the government knew this because it penetrated FARC. Marulanda died knowing his chosen successor, Raul Reyes, had been blown away, too. Indeed, three of FARC's seven top leaders have been killed since March, and the rest are headed "for the grave," Santos said.

Hundreds of FARC foot soldiers are now furtively phoning the government to beg for a deal. Along with fears of their own men turning them in for cash, FARC leaders now work in a poisoned atmosphere, knowing spies are in their midst. They won't win.

• British forces for the first time drove the Taliban from a southern stronghold in a 96-hour battle this month. It was their first combat operation since new troops arrived in March. The New York Times reported a "palpable" sense of relief among villagers, with the district chief and exiles returning to rebuild. "There has been huge optimism from the people," an officer was quoted as saying.

• In the south Philippines, Marxist and Muslim terrorists are desperate. A big arsenal belonging to al-Qaida-linked Abu Sayyaf was unearthed in Sulu Saturday, taking 283 sacks of bomb components out of circulation. Meanwhile, Nur Misuari, the top terrorist of the Moro National Liberation Front, on parole in Davao, pleaded with other terrorists to drop arms and sue for peace at a rally Saturday.

• In Egypt's al-Qaida inner circle, a leading jihad ideologue, using the nom de guerre Dr. Fadl, has now openly questioned terrorism as a tactic, given al-Qaida's mounting losses. He threatened to renounce violence — a new blow to the jihadists.

All of these victories are a direct result of the Bush administration's response (military, economic, intelligence, diplomatic) to the terrorist attack on 11 September 2001.

And, contrary to the collective ignorance of many pundits and journalists alike, global terrorism is on the wane.

Challenging the expert consensus that the threat of global terrorism is increasing, the Human Security Brief 2007 reveals a sharp net decline in the incidence of terrorist violence around the world.

Fatalities from terrorism have declined by some 40 percent, while the loose-knit terror network associated with Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda has suffered a dramatic collapse in popular support throughout the Muslim world.

The Brief also describes and analyses the extraordinary, but largely unnoticed, positive change in sub-Saharan Africa's security landscape. The number of conflicts being waged in the region more than halved between 1999 and 2006; the combat toll dropped by 98 percent.

Finally, the Brief updates the findings of the 2005 Human Security Report, and demonstrates that the decline in the total number of armed conflicts and combat deaths around the world has continued. The number of military coups has also continued decline, as have the number of campaigns of deadly violence waged against civilians.

We are now in a safer world than we were in 2001. Thanks in a very large part to the actions taken by the United States of America (led by George W. Bush) and its allies.

And you can take that to the bank.

Baqubah update

Michael Yon and our military commanders in Iraq are expressing cautious optimism.

I had the opportunity to spend Thanksgiving with General Petraeus. Very interesting series of helicopter flights to several bases. Bottom line is that progress is clear and real, but there are tough days ahead and al Qaeda, for instance, is far from dead. The mood is of cautious optimism, with a concern that some of the very positive media lately might set expectations too high. (That’s right: many military leaders are concerned that the media lately might be too positive.)

Bottom line is that I am more optimistic than ever before, but I share that caution. It’s obvious, too, that the tough fighting is not over.

But I came across something today that might make veterans of the fighting in Baqubah proud. Back in May, just before operation Arrowhead Ripper, there were about 60 violent acts per day. Now there are about 6. The markets are opening and the streets are again filled with people. I thought the veterans of Baqubah might like to know that their efforts have made a tremendous difference for the people here. You fought hard. This writer saw it. Your sacrifices truly meant something.

Encouraging news . . .

Let's have an Israel Appreciation Day

Don Surber discusses how Israel may have saved the world from nuclear war -- twice.

Money quote:

On Sept. 6, 2007, Israeli jets took out what some believe was a developing nuclear facility in Syria. People dance around whether or not it was a building connected to a nuclear program, but I trust Israeli intelligence more than, say, the New York Times.

Me, too.

Transparency

Michael Totten, recently embedded with US Army units in Iraq, has an interesting article over at commentarymagazine.com about what the Army wants you to see.

Some colleagues, readers, and friends have suggested the dispatches I published from Iraq as an embedded reporter might not be reliable, even if true, because I only saw what the United States Army wanted me to see. CBS news anchor Katie Couric said as much about her own coverage when she first arrived in Baghdad in September.

I’ve had the same thoughts myself, and I quietly wondered if I should disclose them. I chose not to, though, because my experience, as it turned out, didn’t actually warrant it.

Go read what convinced him that the Army was not manipulating his experience in order to make things look rosy over there.

Beauchamp gets a second chance

Michael Yon, embedded in Iraq, ends up working alongside Scott Beauchamp's battalion commander who, in passing it forward, gave him a second chance.

Beauchamp is young; under pressure he made a dumb mistake. In fact, he has not always been an ideal soldier. But to his credit, the young soldier decided to stay, and he is serving tonight in a dangerous part of Baghdad. He might well be seriously injured or killed here, and he knows it. He could have quit, but he did not. He faced his peers. I can only imagine the cold shoulders, and worse, he must have gotten. He could have left the unit, but LTC Glaze told me that Beauchamp wanted to stay and make it right. Whatever price he has to pay, he is paying it.

The Army could have just discharged him, or rotated him back to the US. Instead, he was given the choice to leave or to stay.

And Scott Beauchamp decided to stay with his comrades-in-arms. And his CO is supporting him and, in fact, trying to protect him from some of the media predators.

Forgiveness. A concept the Army understands and appreciates.

Reality check

Michael Yon, currently embedded in Iraq, has much to say about America's cognitive dissonance regarding Iraq.

No thinking person would look at last year’s weather reports to judge whether it will rain today, yet we do something similar with Iraq news. The situation in Iraq has drastically changed, but the inertia of bad news leaves many convinced that the mission has failed beyond recovery, that all Iraqis are engaged in sectarian violence, or are waiting for us to leave so they can crush their neighbors. This view allows our soldiers two possible roles: either “victim caught in the crossfire” or “referee between warring parties.” Neither, rightly, is tolerable to the American or British public.

Today I am in Iraq, back in a war of such strategic consequence that it will affect generations yet unborn—whether or not they want it to. Hiding under the covers will not work, because whether it is good news or bad, whether it is true or untrue, once information is widely circulated, it has such formidable inertia that public opinion seems impervious to the corrective balm of simple and clear facts.

Today I am in Iraq, back in a war of such strategic consequence that it will affect generations yet unborn—whether or not they want it to. Hiding under the covers will not work, because whether it is good news or bad, whether it is true or untrue, once information is widely circulated, it has such formidable inertia that public opinion seems impervious to the corrective balm of simple and clear facts.

Read the entire post. It contains a lot more reality and balanced reporting than what we're seeing on TV and reading in our papers.

Recommended. Highly.

Things are looking bad . . .

. . . for Al Qaeda.

Operation Iraqi Freedom has graduated from a battle against a combination of indigenous insurgents and foreign terrorists (al Qaeda) to one against al Qaeda. Al Qaeda has made Iraq its watershed moment, and they are losing badly. This transition of Iraq into al Qaeda’s quagmire is remarkable and momentous in world history, and is going largely unreported by the main stream media who is searching for the next flash-bang to report.

Read it all.

Letter from the front

Michael Yon reprints a letter from LTC Crider who is deployed with the 1-4 CAV in Baghdad. LTC Crider is writing to friends and family of the troopers in his unit about the achievements of his soldiers over there and the impact they are having on Iraqis.

War is a very personal endeavor. We find ourselves here involved in close friendships with one another as well as with the many Iraqis we interact with every day on the streets. We are also very close to our interpreters who share every danger with us. We are all intertwined and nothing happens to one group without it affecting the other.

Recently, I found myself in the 28th Combat Support Hospital emergency room where one of our most loyal interpreters was being treated after being injured in an attack. While his prognosis was excellent, he was very shaken. As he lay on a gurney with his head wrapped and an oxygen mask on his face, he saw me approach and immediately grabbed my arm and began to ask me about each soldier in the truck. He referred to them all as his “brothers” and he meant it. Not knowing his own condition he told me he loved Americans and America. He made me promise that I would take his heart to America if he died. He was going to be fine (he left the hospital the next day) but I could not convince him, so I promised.

Go read the whole thing. It is well worth it, because it is information that is scarce in mainstream reporting about Iraq.

Irrifutably good news from Iraq

Just read the Washington Post:

NEWS COVERAGE and debate about Iraq during the past couple of weeks have centered on the alleged abuses of private security firms like Blackwater USA. Getting such firms into a legal regime is vital, as we've said. But meanwhile, some seemingly important facts about the main subject of discussion last month -- whether there has been a decrease in violence in Iraq -- have gotten relatively little attention. A congressional study and several news stories in September questioned reports by the U.S. military that casualties were down. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), challenging the testimony of Gen. David H. Petraeus, asserted that "civilian deaths have risen" during this year's surge of American forces.

A month later, there isn't much room for such debate, at least about the latest figures. In September, Iraqi civilian deaths were down 52 percent from August and 77 percent from September 2006, according to the Web site icasualties.org. The Iraqi Health Ministry and the Associated Press reported similar results. U.S. soldiers killed in action numbered 43 -- down 43 percent from August and 64 percent from May, which had the highest monthly figure so far this year. The American combat death total was the lowest since July 2006 and was one of the five lowest monthly counts since the insurgency in Iraq took off in April 2004.

Kudos to the Post for reporting this. It's not getting much media attention.

General Petraeus was right.

We are winning.

We can't rest on our laurels yet, though. There is much work to be done. The Iraqis need to resolve some serious political issues before things settle down there.

Godspeed.

What we don't yet know

Michael Totten interviews LTC Mike Silverman about progress, perceptions, and reporting in Iraq.

“What’s the most important thing Americans need to know about Iraq that they don’t currently know?” I said.

“That we’re fighting Al Qaeda,” he said without hesitation. “[Abu Musab al] Zarqawi invented Al Qaeda in Iraq. The top leadership outside Iraq squawked and thought it was a bad idea. Then he blew up the Samarra mosque, triggered a civil war, and got the whole world’s attention. Then the Al Qaeda leadership outside dumped huge amounts of money and people and arms into Anbar Province. They poured everything they had into this place. The battle against Americans in Anbar became their most important fight in the world. And they lost.”

There's a lot more to the interview. Recommended.

Victory in Iraq

A simple claim, made by several prominent Iraqis who are in positions to know, is that we have won the war for Iraq.

Mr. Mahdi was not apologetic about what Iraq offers the United States by way of justification for the blood and treasure and the sacrifice: "Little more than two decades ago, in the aftermath of the Iranian Revolution and the Lebanon War of 1982, the American position in this region was exposed and endangered. Look around you today: Everyone seeks American protection and patronage. The line was held in Iraq; perhaps America was overly sanguine about the course of things in Iraq. But that initial optimism now behind us, the war has been an American victory. All in the region are romancing the Americans, even Syria and Iran in their own way."

I've posted the entire article in the extended entry.

[Via The Jawa Report.]

'You Have Liberated a People'
Iraqis of all sects report progress, not "civil war."

BY FOUAD AJAMI
Sunday, September 16, 2007 12:01 a.m. EDT

BAGHDAD--"We liberated the Anbar, we defeated al Qaeda by denying it religious cover," Sheikh Abdul Sattar Abu Reisha said with a touch of pride and impatience. This was the dashing tribal leader who emerged as the face of the new Sunni accommodation with American power, and who was assassinated by al Qaeda last week. I had not been ready for his youth (born in 1971), nor for his flamboyance. Sir David Lean, the legendary director of "Lawrence of Arabia," would have savored encountering this man. There was style, and an awareness of it, in Abu Reisha: his brown abaya bordered with gold thread, a neat white dishdasha, and a matching headdress. "Our American friends had not understood us when they came, they were proud, stubborn people and so were we. They worked with the opportunists, now they have turned to the tribes, and this is as it should be. The tribes hate religious parties and religious fakers."

We were in Baghdad, and the sheikh gave me his narrative. There was both candor and evasion in the story he told. Al Qaeda and its Arab jihadists had found sanctuary and support in the Anbar; they had recruited the "criminal elements" and the "lowly," they had brought zeal and bigotry unknown to the Iraqis. Initially welcomed, they began to impose their own tyranny. They declared haram (impermissible) the normal range of social life. They banned cigarettes, they married the daughters of decent families without the permission of their elders. They violated the great code of decent society by "shedding the blood of travelers on routine voyages." The prayer leaders of mosques were bullied, then murdered.

Abu Reisha and a small group of like-minded men, he said, came together to challenge al Qaeda. "We fought with our own weapons. I myself fought al Qaeda with my own funds. The Americans were slow to understand our sahwa, our awakening. But they have come around of late. The Americans are innocent; they don't know Iraq. But all this is in the past, and now the Americans have a wise and able military commander on the scene, and the people of the Anbar have found their way. In the Anbar, they now know that the menace comes from Iran, not from the Americans."

Abu Reisha spoke of the guile of the Iranians: They have schemes over the holy cities of Najaf and Karbala, he said. He said the Anbar was in need of money, that its infrastructure was shattered. He welcomed a grant of $70 million given the Anbar by the government, and was sure that more was on the way.

An Iraqi in the know, unsentimental about his country's ways, sought to play down the cult of Abu Reisha. American soldiers, he said, won the war for the Anbar, but it was better to put an Iraq kafiyyah than an American helmet on the victory. He dismissed Abu Reisha. He was useful, he said, but should not be romanticized. "No doubt he was shooting at Americans not so long ago, but the tide has turned, and Abu Reisha knew how to reach an accommodation with the real order of power. The truth is that the Sunnis launched this war four years ago, and have been defeated. The tribes never win wars, they only join the winners."

---

Four months ago, I had seen the Sunni despondency, their recognition of the tragedy that had befallen them in Baghdad. That despondency had deepened in the intervening period. No Arab cavalry had ridden to their rescue, no brigades had turned up from the Arabian Peninsula or from Jordan, and the Egyptians were far away. Reality in Iraq had not waited on the Arabs. The Sunnis of Iraq must now fully grasp that they are on their own. They had relied on the dictatorship, and on the Baath, and these are now gone; there had, of course, been that brief bet on al Qaeda and on the Arab regimes, and it had come to naught.

The one Baghdad politician with the authority, and the place in the pecking order, who could pull the Sunnis back from the precipice is Vice President Tariq Hashemi. There is a parlor game in the Green Zone, and back in Washington, that focuses on Mr. Hashemi. He is at once in the circle of power, and outside of it, simultaneously a man of authority and of the opposition to this new order. He is a leader of the Islamic Party, and a former colonel in the armed forces. He flirts with the government, promising to stand by it, then steps back form it. His caution is understandable: Three of his siblings have been lost to the terror. He is a man of great polish, his English impeccable. There is an aristocratic bearing to him.

He would not call the government sectarian, "I am a man of this government," he said, when I called on him in a villa that reflected the elegance of the man himself. He questioned the government's "performance" and its skill. He pointed to the isolation of the government in the region as evidence of its inability to rule. "I don't question the right of this government to rule. I know I am in the minority in Parliament, I know that they have the largest bloc in our legislature. But ability is an altogether different matter. A more able government would reach an accommodation with Syria, with the other Arab governments and with Turkey. The Syrians may harbor fantasies about the return of the Baathists to power in Baghdad, but they are eager for the benefits of trade and commerce, and their enmity could be eased."

It is late in the hour for the Sunni Arabs, but the age of the supremacists among them has passed. There is realism in Mr. Hashemi, and a knowledge of the ways of the world. Baghdad's Sunnis need him, if only because their crisis is deeper than that of the Sunnis of the Anbar.

---

The loss of Iraq to the Persians is a scarecrow. A great, historic question has been raised by Iraq: Can the Shiite Arabs govern, or are they born and eternal oppositionists? For a man at the center of this great dispute, for the storm swirling around him and the endless predictions of his imminent ouster from power, there is an unhurried quality about Nouri al-Maliki. There is poise and deliberateness in him. The long years in exile must account for the patience. He had waited long for the deliverance of his people; the time in Syrian exile must have been dreary. The Daawa Party had been the quintessential movement of the underground, it had suffered grievously, and sons and brothers of "martyrs" fill its ranks. The men arrayed around Mr. Maliki are resigned to their isolation in the Arab constellation of power. They had been forged by a history of disinheritance. Mr. Maliki is not "America's man in Iraq." He had not been part of the American-sponsored opposition groups prior to the war of liberation. He is a man of the Shiite heartland; his peers in the Shiite political class are men of Baghdad, familiar with Western languages and ways. He is through and through a man of his culture, his Arabic exquisite and melodic. He takes in stride the sorts of things said about him by American officials and legislators. He is keenly aware of the debt owed America by his country--and by his own community, to be exact.

"We may differ with our American friends about tactics, I might not see eye to eye with them on all matters. But my message to them is one of appreciation and gratitude," he said. " To them I say, you have liberated a people, brought them into the modern world. They used to live in fear and now they live in liberty. Iraqis were cut off from the modern world, and thanks to American intervention we now belong to the world around us. We used to be decimated and killed like locusts in Saddam's endless wars, and we have now come into the light. A teacher used to work for $2 a month, now there is a living wage, and indeed in some sectors of our economy, we are suffering from labor shortages."

Though Mr. Maliki had come to power with the support of Moqtada al-Sadr's bloc of deputies in the parliament, he has given a green light for major operations against the Mahdi Army. He walks a fine, thin line between the American military and civilian authorities, and the broad Shiite coalition that sustains him. There is stoicism in him about the dysfunctional cabinet over which he presides; its membership was dictated by the political parties that had picked the ministers. Three groups of ministers had suspended their participation in the work of the government. He would not be bullied, he said, he had lists of highly qualified technocrats eager to take part in a new cabinet; he would stick it out.

"I don't believe that there is a military solution for our conflicts; we have to rehabilitate the troublemakers. We don't arrest Baathists solely because they are Baathists, and the same must hold for those who belong to the Mahdi Army," Mr. Maliki said.

He had courted the notables of the Anbar, he didn't say, but I had been told that heavy subsidies had been made by his government to the Anbar tribal leaders; he had gone to the Anbar with substantial sums that had been paid to the sheikhs. But he looks with a jaundiced eye on arming Sunni "volunteers." He dreads this, and says that this would be a disaster: "We will have come out of a hole only to descend into a deep well." National reconciliation--the sword of Damocles held over his head by his American detractors--is not easy in a country "without a history of dialogue and give-and-take. This may require two or three years. Grant us time, and you will be proud of what you have helped bring forth here."

The historical dilemma of his country was there for everyone to see: "For the Kurds, this is the time of taking, for the Shiite, this is the time of restitution, for the Sunnis this is the time of loss. But ours is one country, and it will have to be shared."

Mr. Maliki recoils from the charge that his is a sectarian government; he notes with satisfaction that Gen. David Petraeus had exonerated the government of that charge. The Mahdi Army had won the war for Baghdad. This has had the paradoxical and beneficial outcome of making that militia unneeded and parasitical. It has given this government a measure of independence from the Sadrists.

---

"Historically we are winning." The words were those of Vice President Adel Abdul Mahdi. This is a scion of Baghdad Shiite aristocracy, at ease with French and English, a man whose odyssey had taken him from Marxism to the Baath, then finally to the Islamism of the Supreme Islamic Council. "We came from under the ashes, and now the new order, this new Iraq, is taking hold. If we were losing, why would the insurgents be joining us?" He had nothing but praise for the effort that had secured the peace of Baghdad: "Petraeus can defend the surge," he said. "He can show the 'red zones' of conflict receding, and the spread of the 'blue zones' of peace. Six months ago, you could not venture into the Anbar, now you can walk its streets in peace. There is a Sunni problem in the country which requires a Shiite initiative. The Sunni problem is power, plain and simple. Sunni society grew addicted to power, and now it has to make this painful adjustment."

Mr. Mahdi was not apologetic about what Iraq offers the United States by way of justification for the blood and treasure and the sacrifice: "Little more than two decades ago, in the aftermath of the Iranian Revolution and the Lebanon War of 1982, the American position in this region was exposed and endangered. Look around you today: Everyone seeks American protection and patronage. The line was held in Iraq; perhaps America was overly sanguine about the course of things in Iraq. But that initial optimism now behind us, the war has been an American victory. All in the region are romancing the Americans, even Syria and Iran in their own way."

For the Sunni-ruled states in the region, he counseled an acceptance of the new Iraq. He looked with pride on his country, and on his city. He saw beyond Baghdad's daily grief. "Baghdad is the heart of the Arab world, this was the hothouse of Arab philosophy and science and literature."

---

Peace has not come to Iraq, the feuds have not fully burned out, but the center holds. The best of Iraq's technocrats, deputy prime minister Barham Saleh, spoke of the new economic vitality of the provinces, of the recovery of regions once lost to darkness and terror. I brought back with me from Iraq a reminder that life renews in that land.

I attended the judicial tribunal that is investigating the crimes of Saddam Hussein's cousin, Ali Hassan al-Majid, better know as Chemical Ali, and 14 other defendants being tried for deeds they committed back in 1991, in the aftermath of the first American war against Saddam Hussein. Chemical Ali had been one of the most dreaded "roosters" of the regime, a haughty killer. His attire was either Western suits or military uniforms. On the afternoon I went to watch his trial, he had shuffled in, leaning on a cane, all dressed in the traditional Arab way. The courtroom setting was one of immense decorum: a five-member panel of judges in their robes, the defense team on one side, the prosecutors on the other.

A lone witness, his face hidden from view behind a simple curtain, told of the cruelty he had seen a generation ago. He told of Chemical Ali executing people point-blank, after three Baathist women singled them out; he told of the burial of the victims on the grounds of a vocational school. He stood firm, the simple witness, when Chemical Ali tried to bully and ridicule him. He had no doubt about the memory of that day. He recalled Chemical Ali, he said, in his olive military uniform, and he correctly identified the rank of Chemical Ali. A policeman distributed bottled water to the defendants who once literally owned and disposed of the fate of this country. They were now being given the justice denied their victims.

In our fashion, we have our very American "metrics" and "benchmarks" with which we judge this war and the order in Iraq we had midwifed. For the war's critics, there can be no redemption of this war, and no faith that Iraq's soil could bring forth anything decent or humane. Today two men of extraordinary talent and devotion, our military commander and our ambassador, will tell of the country they know so well. Doubtless, they will tell of accomplishments and heartbreak. We should grant them--and that distant country--the hearing they deserve.

Mr. Ajami teaches at Johns Hopkins University. He is author of "The Foreigner's Gift: The Americans, the Arabs, and the Iraqis in Iraq," and is the recipient of the Bradley Prize.

[Used with permission from OpinionJournal.com, a web site from Dow Jones & Company, Inc.]

SITREP: Anbar

Michael Totten reports from his embed in Anbar Province that it is so peaceful, the Marines are considering eliminating the requirement to wear body armor.

The Iraqis of the region have turned on al Qaeda and have become staunch allies to American forces there. In part, because we've gotten to know each other.

The Iraqis of Anbar Province turned against Al Qaeda and sided with the Americans in large part because Al Qaeda proved to be far more vicious than advertised. But it’s also because sustained contact with the American military – even in an explosively violent combat zone –convinced these Iraqis that Americans are very different people from what they had been led to believe. They finally figured out that the Americans truly want to help and are not there to oppress them or steal from them. And the Americans slowly learned how Iraqi culture works and how to blend in rather than barge in.

“We hand out care packages from the U.S. to Iraqis now that the area has been cleared of terrorists,” one Marine told me. “When we tell them that some of these packages aren’t from the military or the government, that they were donated by average American citizens in places like Kansas, people choke up and sometimes even cry. They just can’t comprehend it. It is so different from the lies they were told about us and how we’re supposed to be evil.”

It makes for good reading. And there are many photos, as well.

The surge is working in Baghdad, too

Reuters, of all agencies, is reporting that business is slowing down in a Baghdad hospital. And they are attributing it to the surge.

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - A row of beds lies empty in the emergency ward of Baghdad's Yarmouk Hospital. The morgue, which once overflowed with corpses, is barely a quarter full.

Doctors at the hospital, a barometer of bloodshed in the Iraqi capital, say there has been a sharp fall in victims of violence admitted during a seven-month security campaign.

Last month the fall was particularly dramatic, with 70 percent fewer bodies and half the number of wounded brought in compared to July, hospital director Haqi Ismail said.

"The major incidents, like explosions and car bombs, sometimes reached six or seven a day. Now it's more like one or two a week," he told Reuters.

The relative calm at the Yarmouk hospital lends weight to U.S. and Iraqi government assertions that a security campaign launched around Baghdad in February has achieved results.

Let us pray that Petraeus' approach continues to succeed.

It should be about oil

And that is the point Greenspan made in his book (free subscription required to access the link).

Greenspan clarified his remarks in an interview with the Washington Post, telling the newspaper that although securing global oil supplies was "not the administration's motive," he had presented the White House with a case for why removing Hussein was important for the global economy.

"I was not saying that that's the administration's motive," Greenspan said. "I'm just saying that if somebody asked me, 'Are we fortunate in taking out Saddam?,' I would say it was essential."

He said that in his discussions with President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, "I have never heard them basically say, 'We've got to protect the oil supplies of the world,' but that would have been my motive."

Greenspan said that he made his economic argument to White House officials and that one lower-level official, whom he declined to identify, told him, "Well, unfortunately, we can't talk about oil."

Reality bites sometimes, but Western civilization has to acknowledge our tremendous dependence upon oil for much of our electricity, many of our chemicals, all of our plastics, and almost all of our transportation. Oil is the fuel for our modern economy.

Couple that with the fact that huge amounts of the world's supply of oil is tied up in the Middle East, and you've got a lot of people interested in stability in that region.

So, yeah, it should be about oil.

Ed Morrissey weighs in on this, as well.

SITREP: Baqubah

Michael Yon, embedded with US troops in Iraq, reports on a patrol being carried out to find and neutralize Al Qeada terrorists. He also remarked about Gen. Petraeus' testifying at the Senate hearings:

I watched during the Senate hearings on 11 September 07 as some Senators attempted to corner General Petraeus, insinuating that the war in Iraq was a distraction from the fight against al Qaeda. It was clearly that during the initial invasion, but not today. These photos were taken at the center of what al Qaeda claimed to be their worldwide headquarters. Listening to some of the Senators’ questions, the true magnitude of the gulf between what is happening in Iraq and what people in America think is happening in Iraq became apparent. Some Senators clearly had been doing their homework and were asking smart questions—if negative at times—but others seemed completely ignorant of the ground situation here, which adds nothing meaningful to the debate.

He mentions how our soldiers are respected by Iraqis now -- they've earned that respect, it seems:

Although the Iraqi Soldiers are nearly always embarrassed when an American like Captain Morris bolts around and tells them to cut out the idiocy, the most interesting dynamic is how it also engenders respect from the Iraqi Soldiers for the Americans. Before the war, our people had no street credibility in Iraq. Iraqis thought American Soldiers were soft, and that the body armor was a type of personal air conditioner. But if the Iraqis knew back then what they know now about American willingness to suffer and fight, it’s doubtful that Saddam would have taunted an angry America. Yet today, knowing our Soldiers to be actually aggressive and able killers when the switch gets flipped to ON, they also see how our people are more competent street fighters than the Iraqi Army, even without the high-tech tools. The man-to-man respect is there. And so when someone like Captain Morris points out to Iraqi Soldiers something they already know they are doing wrong (like painting the wall of someone’s house, for instance), their respect for Americans grows. Day after day, Iraqis come to Americans asking for justice, because they see countless thousands of daily actions by people like Captain Sheldon Morris. Our military is a powerful tribe.

And they represent America extremely well:

American Soldiers closed in. This was fantastically dangerous. I remember wondering what their families might think about them moving in to take the guys alive, when this could cost American lives. How would I write about such Soldiers should they get blown up by a suicide vest planted to specifically take advantage of our Soldiers’ sense of decency?

The dispatch includes many photos, and provides information that we can't seem to get from traditional media sources.

Recommended.

'Between Iraq and a Hard Place'

Thomas Sowell makes some astute observations about the politics in America surrounding the war in Iraq. Here is his conclusion:

There has never been a moment when anyone in Congress, the White House, or the military has ever advocated anything other than getting out when the time is right.

All the arguments, the rhetoric, and the shouting is about when is the time right.

Nobody thinks American troops have to stay in Iraq until the last terrorist is killed or driven out of the country. It is a question of reaching the point where the Iraqis themselves can deal with the terrorist and other problems of their country without American troops.

That is the direction in which the Iraqis seem to be moving already. It is not that we have “won the hearts and minds” of the Iraqi people.

The foreign terrorists — whom our media still insist on calling “insurgents” — have turned both Sunnis and Shi’ites against them with their barbaric attacks on innocent civilians.

You cannot be an “insurgent” in somebody else’s country by killing the people of that country.

Those who warn that Iraq could be “another Vietnam” need to get their history straight about Vietnam. The South Vietnamese government continued to defend itself against military invasion from the north after American troops withdrew.

Only after congressional politicians pulled the rug out from under them by cutting off financial aid, while their enemies were still receiving financial aid from other countries, did South Vietnam fall to the invaders.

Only similar congressional sabotage, in response to similar left-wing supporters, can make Iraq another Vietnam.

Go read how he got there . . .

Despite some fervent wishing, the surge is, in fact, working

Michael Totten reports from Ramadi about the unmistakable signs of peace breaking out all over town.

After spending some time in and around Baghdad with the United States military I visited the city of Ramadi, the capital of Iraq’s notoriously convulsive and violent Anbar Province, and breathed an unlikely sigh of relief. Only a few months ago Ramadi was one of the most dangerous cities in the world. It was another “Fallujah,” and certainly the most dangerous place in Iraq. Today, to the astonishment of everyone – especially the United States Army and Marines – it is perhaps the safest city in all of Iraq outside of Kurdistan.

You don't have to believe Petraeus' report (though you really should), because the evidence is increasingly plain to see on the ground in Iraq.

More evidence that it's working

Bill Ardolino, currently embedded with U.S. Marines in Fallujah, has another report posted about our military's continuing progress in Iraq.

Heading into downtown on Fran -- the main thoroughfare that bisects the city -- was a drastically different experience than it was during my last visit in January. More folks were out and about, new solar-powered streetlights lined the way, the barriers along the road were freshly painted, and the Marines were alert but loose, lacking the palpable tension that used to accompany a trip down this historically explosive stretch of highway.

Stability is dependent upon security. The surge is providing the security, so that the Iraqis, themselves, can find a stable equilibrium in their new, free, country.

Go read the rest of Bill's report. He has included quite a few pictures, as well.

"The positive change . . . is astounding."

Bill Ardolino, who just returned to Iraq as an embed this past week, finds the situation in Fallujah has changed dramatically in the eight months since his previous embed there.

I've attended a Fallujah City Council meeting, a recruiting day for the "Fallujah Protectors" (neighborhood watch), the establishment of the city's last police precinct and a meeting of "muktars," traditional cultural leaders of specific neighborhoods who work with Marines to improve infrastructure. Tomorrow, my CAG unit will distribute food bags downtown. Almost none of this access or interaction was possible in January, and the cooperation with American personnel is widespread and animated.

The surreality of the change can be summed up by this afternoon. I sat chit-chatting in a downtown precinct with Iraqi cops and newly-minted neighborhood watchmen, junior security officials drawn from the same labor pool that previously drove the insurgency. As was the case last visit, the Iraqis assume that I'm an Arab when they first see me, and express amused fascination when they discover I'm American. Apparently I look like a member of a tribe that lives northwest of the city, whose members sport full beards, lighter brown skin and light eyes. I always respond that there are plenty of Americans who look just like them, because America welcomes all races. Coupled with my prominent camera and status as "a journalist," I rate somewhere between a bemusing curiosity and a very minor celebrity.

Go read the rest.

Doomsday, revisited

Ron Rosenbaum has an article up at Slate that discusses something that most Americans have forgotten since 1989 -- nuclear war with Russia. It appears that the Soviets actually developed a doomsday machine -- designed to automatically launch their nuclear arsenal if their leadership were incapacitated in a nuclear conflict (a sort of dead man switch).

. . . According to these accounts, the Soviets built and activated a variation of a doomsday machine in the mid-'80s. And there is no evidence Putin's Russia has deactivated the system.

An alarming read to be sure.

[Via Instapundit.]

Tribal revolt in Iraq

Dave Kilcullen, who has just completed a tour in Iraq as senior counterinsurgency adviser to the Multi-National Force, posts about the anatomy of a tribal revolt. Here's how he starts:

Some aspects of the war in Iraq are hard to fit into “classical” models of insurgency. One of these is the growing tribal uprising against al Qa’ida, which could transform the war in ways not factored into neat “benchmarks” developed many months ago and thousands of miles away. I spent time out on the ground during May and June working with coalition units, tribal leaders and fighters engaged in the uprising, so I felt a few field observations might be of interest to the Small Wars community. I apologize in advance for the epic length of this post, but it's a complex issue, so I hope people will forgive my long-windedness. Like much else, it’s too early to know how this new development will play out. But surprisingly (surprising to me, anyway), indications so far are relatively positive.

To understand what follows, you need to realize that Iraqi tribes are not somehow separate, out in the desert, or remote: rather, they are powerful interest groups that permeate Iraqi society. More than 85% of Iraqis claim some form of tribal affiliation; tribal identity is a parallel, informal but powerful sphere of influence in the community. Iraqi tribal leaders represent a competing power center, and the tribes themselves are a parallel hierarchy that overlaps with formal government structures and political allegiances. Most Iraqis wear their tribal selves beside other strands of identity (religious, ethnic, regional, socio-economic) that interact in complex ways, rendering meaningless the facile division into Sunni, Shi’a and Kurdish groups that distant observers sometimes perceive. The reality of Iraqi national character is much more complex than that, and tribal identity plays an extremely important part in it, even for urbanized Iraqis. Thus the tribal revolt is not some remote riot on a reservation: it’s a major social movement that could significantly influence most Iraqis where they live.

Later, Kilcullen points out that significant political progress has been made in Iraq, though the West has largely failed to recognize that fact. This is a key piece of information that we need to understand.

The implications of the tribal revolt have been somewhat overlooked by the news media and in the public debate in Coalition capitals. In fact, the uprising represents very significant political progress toward reconciliation at the grass-roots level, and major security progress in marginalizing extremists and reducing civilian deaths. It also does much to redress the lack of coalition forces that has hampered previous counterinsurgency approaches, by throwing tens of thousands of local allies into the balance, on our side. For these reasons, the tribal revolt is arguably the most significant change in the Iraqi operating environment for several years. But because it occurred in ways that were neither expected nor accounted for in our “benchmarks” (which were formulated before the uprising began to really develop, and which tend to focus on national legislative developments at the central government and political party level rather than grass-roots changes in the quality of life of ordinary Iraqis) the significance of this development has been overlooked to some extent.

It's a pretty long essay but, if you want to have a better understanding of what is really going on in Iraq today, it is well worth your time.

Recommended. Highly.

Sitrep Baghdad

Michael Totten, embedded with the 82nd Airborne in Baghdad, has a new report on what's going on in his neighborhood there. And you should hear what Iraqis are saying to our troops:

“When you came and liberated this country,” he continued, “Iraq had 25 million Saddams. America is turning us back into human beings. That soccer field is not for a specific person. It is for everybody. We appreciate that. We believe that if Americans have something that is ours, they will return it to us. If the Iraqi government has something that is ours, we forget it.”

Our host for the evening nodded in agreement.

“We support you,” the man continued. “You support our back, we support your back. But you must understand: If you pull back, we will pull back. I will have no choice but to pull back if I can’t depend on you. It will be much harder for us to stand together. But as long as you stand firmly behind us we will support you against Moqtada al Sadr and the other bastards in the area.”

Go read the whole report.

The quagmire in Iraq

It's not what you think. [My emphasis.]

Say there's a group of people in Iraq fighting what looks increasingly like an unwinnable war. The core of this group is made up of foreigners intent on a mission of 'liberation' in a land historically alien to their ideologies. In the process of enacting their designs, this group has suffered considerable casualties, sunk untold sums in resources, and lost many once-reliable friends. Sound familiar? This is the current state of international jihadism, an institution with a situation grimmer and an outlook more despairing than for the US-led coalition.

Go read it all.

Baqubah -- from another angle

The L.A. Times reports on the progress, and remaining work, in Baqubah.

Iraq's deputy prime minister flew here Sunday under heavy guard with promises of food, jobs and cash for a city emerging from the sway of Sunni Arab militants largely driven out by U.S.-led troops. What he got was an earful.

Men in long white dishdashas pushed past the crush of bodyguards, soldiers, aides and journalists that surrounded Deputy Prime Minister Barham Salih in a market street, demanding to know when food rations would arrive from Baghdad and when government pensions would be paid.

Young, veiled women told him that they had risked their lives to sit through university exams in an area where Iraqi soldiers once dared not go and that they still had not received their test results. Employees at a state-run electrical plant said their salaries went unpaid for months at a time. And tribal leaders gathered at the governor's fortified office here berated him for talking about development projects when insurgents still terrorize outlying roads and villages in Diyala province.

"What you are talking about are dreams," said Sheik Hamid Anbagiya. "First we have to stop the insurgency. Then we can talk about civil services and projects."

But Salih told reporters he was encouraged by what he saw in Baqubah, the provincial capital: streets full of shoppers, produce and sodas for sale in the market, and men with graying beards smoking cigarettes and sipping tea at a cafe.

If most of the gripes are about paychecks and government services, then true progress is being made in defeating the terrorists there. We've a ways to go, but we've come a long way, too.

Go read the rest.

Turnaround

It seems that even Der Spiegel is acknowledging that the surge is working. Jules Crittenden brought this to my attention:

Written by a German in a brutally honest, harsh-lit multi-part article in Der Spiegel. The dirty secret the world doesn’t want to know. America, in heavy sacrifice of blood and treasure, is doing something right in Iraq.

Crittenden also has some accurate remarks about the media's coverage of the war. Good read.

Night patrol in Baghdad

Michael Totten accompanies an element of the 82nd Airborne on a night patrol in Baghdad. In it, the patrol comes upon a mosque.

When we arrived outside the mosque, some of the soldiers squatted in driveways across the street and scanned the roof. I joined them as Eddy and the others took the suspect to the gate.

I crouched near the ground.

"There are four men on the roof", a soldier said. "You can't see them anymore. They just ducked away as we got here."

"They have a little bunker up there", he continued. "You can't see it from here, but it has sand bags and sniper netting around it."

"What are you going to do?" I said.

"Nothing", he said. "It's a mosque."

"They're violating curfew," I said, "and stalking us in the dark from a militarized mosque. And you aren't going to do anything?"

"Our rules of engagement say we can't interfere in any way with a mosque unless they are shooting at us", he said.

We left our stalker with his "co-workers" and walked away.

Things over there are not as straightforward as stateside "experts" would have you believe. Totten gives a balanced, unbiased, accounting of his experiences there. I think you'll find it refreshing . . . and encouraging.

The surge is working -- at home

Don Surber reports on poll numbers showing that Americans are coming around on the war in Iraq.

He discusses why Congress is struggling so mightily to get us out of Iraq despite clear indications that the surge is working. Money quote:

Democrats fear American success in Iraq more than they fear al-Qaeda.

Go read the whole thing.

[Via Instapundit.]

Bad times for some in Iraq

Strategypage has posted an interesting summary of the current situation in Iraq. Here's how it begins:

The surge has basically been chasing the terrorist and criminal gangs around the suburbs of Baghdad, or even into northern or western Iraq. This has taken its toll. Time spent in flight cannot be spent planting IEDs or killing people. Putting all these guys on the road, also makes them more susceptible to capture. A lot of important terrorists have been captured this way. The chief liaison between al Qaeda headquarters and al Qaeda in Iraq was nabbed, as well as many mid-level terrorist cell leaders.

Go read the rest.

Surge report: Baghdad

Michael Totten is with the 82nd Airborne in Baghdad, and he has posted an encouraging report about the progress of the surge.

“This is not what I expected in Baghdad,” I said.

“Most of what we’re doing doesn’t get reported in the media,” he [Lieutenant Wolf] said. “We’re not fighting a war here anymore, not in this area. We’ve moved way beyond that stage. We built a soccer field for the kids, bought all kinds of equipment, bought them school books and even chalk. Soon we’re installing 1,500 solar street lamps so they have light at night and can take some of the load off the power grid. The media only covers the gruesome stuff. We go to the sheiks and say hey man, what kind of projects do you want in this area? They give us a list and we submit the paperwork. When the projects get approved, we give them the money and help them buy stuff.”

Not everything they do is humanitarian work, unless you consider counter-terrorism humanitarian work. In my view, you should. Few Westerners think of personal security as a human right, but if you show up in Baghdad I’ll bet you will. Personal security may, in fact, be the most important human right. Without it the others mean little. People aren’t free if they have to hide in their homes from death squads and car bombs.

He also reports on Iraqi adults and children smiling and waving at our troops, community improvement projects, and peaceful interactions with Iraqi citizens.

The job is not finished yet, but great strides are being taken in the right direction.

Go read the whole thing. Mr. Totten has included lots of pictures in the post. Balanced reporting at its best. Many journalists could learn from Mr. Totten's example. Highly recommended.

Reality check

Iraq combat veteran, Pete Hegseth, takes exception to Sen. Carl Levin's anti-war arguments:

As an Iraq war veteran who participated in combat operations and political reconciliation efforts, I take issue with some of the arguments repeatedly being made on Capitol Hill. Most recently I was bothered by statements from Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), who cited three common antiwar arguments in his June 21 op-ed, " Lincoln's Example for Iraq," all of which run counter to realities on the ground in Iraq.

I missed this article last month, but it is still relevant today.

Recommended reading.

'Petraeus or betray us'

Investor's Business Daily has an excellent opinion piece out describing the tremendous progress being made in Iraq under General Petraeus' leadership.

On Saturday, members of the 1st Cavalry Division based near Taji brokered a formal agreement between Sunni and Shiite tribal leaders to join forces against al-Qaida and other jihadists. The Sunni and Shiite agreed to use members of more than 25 local tribes to protect the area around Taji, just 12 miles north of Baghdad.

The deal is just the latest example of the progress Democrats claim isn't happening in Iraq — a series of deals with various tribes and militia groups that at one point were part of the insurgency. But it's the first involving both Sunni and Shiite sheiks together.

Here's more:

Last October, al-Qaida in Iraq declared Baqouba to be the capital of the Islamic State in Iraq, and claimed to control both Anbar and Diyala provinces, of which Baqouba is the capital. But that was before Operation Arrowhead Ripper. Of the 1,000 al-Qaida who were thought to have been in Baqouba, those who haven't been killed or captured have fled.

And we're not doing it alone. Despite mainstream media reports, Iraqis are fighting and dying for their freedom in ever greater numbers. Progress is being made. But as even New York Times reporter John Burns notes: "The most likely outcome of an American withdrawal any time soon would be cataclysmic violence."

The politicos and mainstream media who continually beat the drum of defeat are really missing the boat on this one.

Go read the whole thing.

Quiet in Baghdad

Michael Totten is in Baghdad, and has an interesting post up about his experiences. He remarked about how much quieter it seemed than what he would have thought from all of the news reports back home.

I watched helicopters fly over the city in the distance and launch burning white countermeasure flares to confuse heat-seeking missiles as the pilots flew over hostile parts of the city. This was the only evidence I saw that I was in a war zone. I heard no shots fired, and I heard no explosions.

After having spent several days Baghdad’s Green Zone and Red Zone, I still haven’t heard or seen any explosions. It’s a peculiar war. It is almost a not-war. Last July’s war in Northern Israel and Southern Lebanon was hundreds of times more violent and terrifying than this one. Explosions on both sides of the Lebanese-Israeli border were constant when I was there.

You’d think explosions and gunfire define Iraq if you look at this country from far away on the news. They do not. The media is a total distortion machine. Certain areas are still extremely violent, but the country as a whole is defined by heat, not war, at least in the summer. It is Iraq’s most singular characteristic. I dread going outside because it’s hot, not because I’m afraid I will get hurt.

Lots of interesting stuff in his report. Recommended.

Progress report: Iraq

Michael Yon has posted a dispatch from Diyala province that shows substantial progress being made among the citizens -- including many insurgents -- there.

Today marks D+30 since the start of Operation Arrowhead Ripper. The initial goal of Arrowhead Ripper was to clear Baqubah of al Qaeda, and then attempt to “jump start” the city back into civic life, which had all but ceased while the terrorists were in control. Though relatively minor clearing operations are still underway, there is little combat in the city.

Today Colonel Steve Townsend, the American commander of the 3-2 Stryker Brigade Combat Team, presided over a meeting with Iraqi Army officers and former insurgent leaders. The insurgent leaders who seem to be sincerely working toward peace are now collectively referred to as “the Baqubah Guardians.” I was allowed to attend the meeting, but was—understandably—not permitted to photograph or videotape the proceedings.

Colonel Townsend clarified the purpose of the meeting; it was not to formalize relations or to establish a chain of command, but to work out ways of cooperating to bring better days to Baqubah.

Go read the rest.

We're winning -- pass the word!

In Iraq, that is. Even though it looks like a rout in Washington, D.C., these days, with the Dishonorable Harry Reid presiding . . .

It's pathetic when a major political party holds a pajama party to publicize its desire to surrender during a war. But it's even worse when such shenanigans drown out a vital message from a real leader.

Go read about what is really happening in Iraq . . .

Al Qaeda on the wane

Michael Yon reports from Diyala province about the substantiated effectiveness of the current surge operations in Iraq. He also has a video interview with Abu Ali, the commander of the formerly insurgent 1920s Brigades (now allied with coalition forces against al Qaeda).

Before the tape was running, I asked Abu Ali why he and the 1920s turned against al Qaeda in Buhriz. Speaking through LT David Wallach, a native Arabic speaker, Abu Ali said that “al Qaeda is an abomination of Islam: cutting off heads, stealing people’s money, kidnapping . . . every type of torture they have done.”

The recent stories of baked children came to mind. I asked if Abu Ali had heard about children being baked. Ali said no, he had not heard such a story, but he would not be surprised if it were true because al Qaeda had done so many crimes, such as cutting off a man’s head, putting it up on a stick and parading it around town.

Ali said people had been afraid in their own homes because of al Qaeda. I asked if he had fought Americans and Ali laughed and said through Wallach, “What kind of question is that?” I chuckled. Unfortunately, we had to go to other meetings, so the time for taping was short. In closing, I asked Abu Ali if there was something he would like to say to Americans. The markets that had been closed under al Qaeda were bustling around us.

Ali thought for a moment as some local people tried to interrupt him with greetings, and he said, “I ask one thing,” and now I paraphrase Ali’s words: “After the Iraqi Army and Police take hold and the security forces are ready, we want a schedule for the leaving of the American forces.”

“I will tell the Americans this,” I said. Ali seemed satisfied as he went off with another American unit. We loaded back into the Stryker and headed to other interesting meetings on other interesting matters, all dealing with the grinding gears of winning or losing this war, and with catching and killing al Qaeda.

As Treebeard, of Fangorn Forest in Middle Earth, said: "Don't be hasty, that is my motto."

We, as a nation, must follow that philosophy if we are to ultimately defeat the blight of terrorism that threatens our world. After all, it took five years after the Treaty of Paris was signed with Britain in 1782 before the Constitution of the United States was written -- and that was motivated by the failed attempt to govern the country under the Articles of Confederation (which were signed in November of 1777, a full 10 years before our Constitution was signed).

We must give the Iraqis no less an opportunity.

Baqubah D+18

Michael Yon reports on Baqubah, Operation Arrowhead Ripper, and the silence of the media.

Since the beginning of Arrowhead Ripper—with the loss of one 3-2 SBCT soldier killed in action—troops found more than 130 bombs planted in ambush, about two dozen buildings rigged to explode, and more than half a dozen car bombs. (That’s only the beginning.) Yet street by street, house by house, step by step, the infantry soldiers cleared most of Baqubah, working under intensely stressful conditions. They cleared block by block, no place to sleep but the ground, no showers to wash away the sweaty grit of war. This combat-experienced brigade outsmarted the enemy. I’d like to say more, but the enemy will get no help from these pages.

Go read the whole thing.

Baqubah at D+16

Michael Yon has posted an update on Operation Arrowhead Ripper in Baqubah. He spends a lot of time discussing how the Iraqi's perceive the U.S. contingent in their country.

Most Iraqis I talk with acknowledge that if it was ever about the oil, it’s not now. Not mostly anyway. It clearly would have been cheaper just to buy the oil or invade somewhere easier that has more. Similarly, most Iraqis seem now to realize that we really don’t want to stay here, and that many of us can’t wait to get back home. They realize that we are not resolved to stay, but are impatient to drive down to Kuwait and sail away. And when they consider the Americans who actually deal with Iraqis every day, the Iraqis can no longer deny that we really do want them to succeed. But we want them to succeed without us. We want to see their streets are clean and safe, their grass is green, and their birds are singing. We want to see that on television. Not in person. We don’t want to be here. We tell them that every day. It finally has settled in that we are telling the truth.

Now that all those realizations and more have settled in, the dynamics here are changing in palpable ways.

We, as a nation, need to give Iraq some more time to get on their feet and be capable of standing on their own.

Lone Survivor

An interview with the only survivor of a Navy SEAL unit that was overrun in Afghanistan . . .

I'm going to have to order that book, methinks . . . .

UPDATE: Done . . .

Surge ops

David Kilcullen, currently serving as Senior Counterinsurgency Adviser, Multi-National Force—Iraq, has an informative essay explaining the current 'surge' operations in Iraq.

It will be a long, hard summer, with much pain and loss to come, and things could still go either way. But the population-centric approach is the beginning of a process that aims to put the overall campaign onto a sustainable long-term footing. The politics of the matter then can be decisive, provided the Iraqis use the time we have bought for them to reach the essential accommodation. The Embassy and MNF-I continue to work on these issues at the highest levels but fundamentally, this is something that only Iraqis can resolve: our role is to provide an environment in which it becomes possible.

All this may change. These are long-term operations: the enemy will adapt and we'll have to adjust what we're doing over time. Baq’ubah, Arab Jabour and the western operations are progressing well, and additional security measures in place in Baghdad have successfully tamped down some of the spill-over of violence from other places. The relatively muted response (so far) to the second Samarra bombing is evidence of this. Time will tell, though....

A major element in the equation is the political class in America -- will they do what it takes to help us win this war? Or will they continue to go barrelling down their tawdry path of self-destruction?

Well said

DJ Drummond at Wizbang! has a good post up about the war we are fighting against terrorism.

This war is right. Those who blame President Bush are short-sighted or liars. This war began when the nations of the Middle East gave way to the despots and extremists, who foolishly thought that the terrorists they created would not attack anyone in their number, but only go after external enemies, to dismay the West and make them leave the region and its treasures to the men who already held palaces and arrogant titles. This war was not declared by anyone in America, Republican or Democrat, but by the Ayatollah Khomeini in 1979. It grew and consumed first Iran, then spread through the Middle East, converting terrorists from greedy rabbles and craven opportunists, into religious monsters such as we have not seen in any country which keeps religious leaders and government power separate from each other. The enemy used oil as an early weapon, then added hijackings, kidnappings, the odd assassination and random murders in its arsenal, all the while proclaiming its victimhood to the media, which defected from the West and renamed itself the arbiter of the co-called 'Global Village' in order to collect more international subscribers.

The men who hijacked airliners, flew them into buildings and murdered thousands of innocent people in one day, they were not Americans nor did they love anything about America. It was not any American's fault that 9/11 happened, but it fell to America to answer in force. Because nothing but force would suffice.

Go read the whole thing . . .

War News

Battle for Baqubah: Drilling for Justice

Michael Yon's latest dispatch about the battle to eliminate Al Qaeda in Baqubah. In addition to a progress report, he also discusses what the enemies do to innocent civilians in areas under Al Qaeda control.

Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) had tarnished its name here by publicly attacking and murdering children, videotaping beheadings, all while imposing harsh punishments on Iraqi civilians found guilty of violating morality laws prohibiting activities like smoking. The AQI installed Sharia court had sanctioned the amputation of the two “smoking fingers” for those who violated anti-smoking laws. In part because local sentiment was shifting against it, AQI synthesized with other groups and undertook an image makeover, christening itself “The Islamic State of Iraq.” But the new name was just lipstick on a pig here.

On the evening of the 24th I spoke with a local Iraqi official, Colonel Faik, who said the Muftis would order the severance of the two fingers used to hold a cigarette for any Iraqis caught smoking. Other reports, from here in Diyala and also in Anbar, allege that smokers are murdered by AQI. Most Iraqis smoke and this particular prohibition appeared to have earned the ire of many locals. After an American unit cleared an apartment complex on the 23rd, LTC Smiley, the battalion commander, reported that residents didn’t ask for food and water, but cigarettes. In other parts of Baqubah, people have been celebrating the routing of AQI by lighting up and smoking cigarettes.

Other AQI edicts included beatings for men who refused to grow beards, and corporal punishments for obscene sexual suggestiveness, defined by such “loose” behavior as carrying tomatoes and cucumbers in the same bag. These fatwas were not eagerly embraced by most Iraqis, and the taint traveled back to the Muftis who sat in supreme judgment. Locals, who are increasingly helpful in pointing out and celebrating the downfall of AQI here, said that during the initial Arrowhead Ripper attack the morning of the 19th, AQI murdered five men. Townsend’s men found the buried corpses behind an AQI prison, exactly where they’d been told to look for the group grave. Locals also directed Townsend’s men to a torture house. Peering through a window, American soldiers saw knives, swords, bindings and drills. AQI is well-known for its macabre eagerness to drill into kneecaps, elbows, ribs, skulls, and other parts of victims.

If we don't fight this kind of evil abroad, then we will end up having to fight it here.

It sounds impossible that people would do this to other people, doesn't it? Yet this has very recently been a reality in Baqubah, and in many other places throughout human history.

We must not forget that.

Update: Baqubah

Michael Yon has posted an encouraging update about Operation Arrowhead Ripper. He's telling like it is -- warts and all.

The combat in Baqubah should soon reach a peak. Al Qaeda seems to have been effectively isolated. The initial attack on 19 June achieved enough surprise that al Qaeda was caught off guard and trapped. They have been beaten back mostly into pockets and are surrounded and will be dealt with. Part of this is actually due to the capability of Strykers. We were able to “attack from the march.” In other words, a huge force drove in from places like Baghdad and quickly locked down Baqubah.

LTG Ray Odierno visited Baqubah on the 21st. Odierno clarified that this battle is to be final: we are not going to do this again. Odierno stressed to our commanders that they need to be thinking of an end-state that results in Iraqis taking charge, but that Iraqi commanders should not be given the reins until they are ready, so that the result is we set them up for success. Odierno’s timing was remarkable: even before he arrived, the commanders here were talking about end-state daily and, on a more sour note, our commanders have their hands full with the local Iraqi commanders who seem less competent (to be kind) than those I have seen elsewhere, such as in Mosul.

Go read it all.

Battle for Baqubah

Michael Yon is one of two journalists who are actually in Baqubah and who have access to what is really going on. He reports on the first day of Operation Arrowhead Ripper.

The heat is intense for the enemy and for us. Soldiers, during any chance, would lay-down during the heat of day, and in complete body armor and helmets, fall asleep in the dirt. I took photos of course. Our guys are tough. The enemy in Baqubah is as good as any in Iraq, and better than most. That’s saying a lot. But our guys have been systematically trapping them, and have foiled some big traps set for our guys. I don’t want to say much more about that, but our guys are seriously outsmarting them. Big fights are ahead and we will take serious losses probably, but al Qaeda, unless they find a way to escape, are about to be slaughtered. Nobody is dropping leaflets asking them to surrender. Our guys want to kill them, and that’s the plan.

A positive indicator on the 19th and the 20th is that most local people apparently are happy that al Qaeda is being trapped and killed. Civilians are pointing out IEDs and enemy fighters, so that’s not working so well for al Qaeda. Clearly, I cannot do a census, but that says something about the locals.

Read the whole thing.

Aid and comfort to the enemy

Fred Thompson has some interesting things to say about the Dishonorable Harry Reid's false and inflammatory statements about Iraq. Mr. Thompson echoes what I've been saying about our disgraceful Senate Majority Leader:

But Reid's comments are not meant for logical analysis. He proclaimed the war lost some time ago, and the surge as a failure even before the additional troops were on the ground. The problem is that every one of Reid's comments I've noted here has also been reported gleefully by Al Jazeera and other anti-American media. Whether he means to or not, he’s encouraging our enemies to believe that they are winning the critical war of will.

Victory is more than a body count

J.D. Johannes, embedded with some of our Marines in Anbar province, Iraq, provides some insight into the strategy and tactics behind the current successes in Iraq.

In 2005 and 2006 the Marines started engaging in census/data collection operations to build a directory of the AO they worked in.

Now in 2007 the best databases are a combination phone book, DMV and genealogical record complete with photos.

When squads and platoons go on patrol they know who lives in an area and who does not.

This started to give Marines in certain areas an upper hand against the insurgents--it was now harder to hide among the people.

The second leap forward in removing the oxygen from the sea was the spontaneous and coaxed rise of the Anbar Awakening.

In some AOs like Khalidiyah, the awakening was not very spontaneous. Marine Battalion Commanders worked with respected members of the community and tribal leaders to bring it about.

The Awakening added the last ingredient needed for an Anbar variant to the Briggs plan--the home guard and an invigorated police to man all the entry control points.

Read the whole thing.

SITREP: Iraq

Senator Joe Lieberman has recently returned from the Middle East and reports on what he saw in and about Iraq.

I recently returned from Iraq and four other countries in the Middle East, my first trip to the region since December. In the intervening five months, almost everything about the American war effort in Baghdad has changed, with a new coalition military commander, Gen. David Petraeus; a new U.S. ambassador, Ryan Crocker; the introduction, at last, of new troops; and most important of all, a bold, new counterinsurgency strategy.

Commonality

Nouri Al-Maliki, Prime Minister of Iraq, has posted an interesting essay about the struggle for freedom and national sovereignty that Iraq is going through.

It's in the extended entry.

Our Common Struggle
America had its civil war. Why expect freedom to come easy to Iraq?

BY NOURI AL-MALIKI
Wednesday, June 13, 2007 12:01 a.m. EDT

BAGHDAD, Iraq--Americans keen to understand the ongoing struggle for a new Iraq can be guided by the example of their own history. In the 1860s, your country fought a great struggle of its own, a civil war that took hundreds of thousands of lives but ended in the triumph of freedom and the birth of a great power. Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation signaled the destruction of the terrible institution of slavery, and the rise of a country dedicated, more than any other in the world of nation-states then and hence, to the principle of human liberty.

Our struggle in Iraq is similar to the great American quest, and is perhaps even more complicated. As your country was fighting that great contest over its unity and future, Iraq was a province of an Ottoman empire steeped in backwardness and ignorance. A half a century later, the British began an occupation of Iraq and drew the borders of contemporary Iraq as we know them today. Independence brought no relief to the people of our land. They were not given the means of political expression, nor were they to know political arrangements that respected their varied communities.

Under the Baath tyranny, Iraqis were to endure a brutal regime the likes of which they had never known before. Countless people were put to death on the smallest measure of suspicion. Wars were waged by that regime and our national treasure was squandered without the consent of a population that was herded into costly and brutal military campaigns. Today when I hear the continuous American debate about the struggle raging in Iraq, I can only recall with great sorrow the silence which attended the former dictator's wars.

It is perhaps true that only people who are denied the gift of liberty can truly appreciate its full meaning and bounty. I look with admiration at the American debate surrounding the Iraq war, and I admire even those opinions that differ from my own. As prime minister of Iraq I have been subjected to my share of criticism in that American debate, but I harbor no resentment and fully understand that the basic concerns of Americans are the safety of their young people fighting in our country and the national interests of their society. As this American debate goes on, I am guided and consoled by the sacred place of freedom and liberty in the American creed and in America's notion of itself.

---

War being what it is, the images of Iraq that come America's way are of car bombs and daily explosions. Missing from the coverage are the great, subtle changes our country is undergoing, the birth of new national ideas and values which will in the end impose themselves despite the death and destruction that the terrorists have been hell-bent on inflicting on us. Those who endured the brutality of the former regime, those who saw the outside world avert its gaze from their troubles, know the magnitude of the change that has come to Iraq. A fundamental struggle is being fought on Iraqi soil between those who believe that Iraqis, after a long nightmare, can retrieve their dignity and freedom, and others who think that oppression is the order of things and that Iraqis are doomed to a political culture of terror, prisons and mass graves. Some of our neighbors have made this struggle more lethal still, they have placed their bets on the forces of terror in pursuit of their own interests.

When I became prime minister a year and a half ago, my appointment emerged out of a political process unique in our neighborhood: Some 12 million voters took part in our parliamentary elections. They gave voice to their belief in freedom and open politics and their trust imposed heavy burdens on all of us in political life. Our enemies grew determined to drown that political process in indiscriminate violence, to divert attention from the spectacle of old men and women casting their vote, for the first time, to choose those who would govern in their name. You may take this right for granted in America, but for us this was a tantalizing dream during the decades of dictatorship and repression.

Before us lies a difficult road--the imperative of national reconciliation, the drafting of a new social contract that acknowledges the diversity of our country. It was in that spirit that those who drafted our constitution made provisions for amending it. The opponents of the constitution were a minority, but we sought for our new political life the widest possible measure of consensus. From the outset, I committed myself to the principle of reconciliation, pledged myself to its success. I was determined to review and amend many provisions and laws passed in the aftermath of the fall of the old regime, among them the law governing de-Baathification. I aimed to find the proper balance between those who opposed the decrees on de-Baathification and others who had been victims of the Baath Party. This has not been easy, but we have stuck to that difficult task.

Iraq is well on its way to passing a new oil law that would divide the national treasure among our provinces and cities, based on their share of the population. This was intended to reassure those provinces without oil that they will not be left behind and consigned to poverty. The goal is to repair our oil sector, open the door for new investments and raise the standard of living of Iraqi families. Our national budget this year is the largest in Iraq's history, its bulk dedicated to our most neglected provinces and to improving the service sector in the country as a whole. Our path has been made difficult by the saboteurs and the terrorists who target our infrastructure and our people, but we have persevered, even though our progress has been obscured by the scenes of death and destruction.

Daily we still fight the battle for our security. We lose policemen and soldiers to the violence, as do the multinational forces fighting along our side. We are training and equipping a modern force, a truly national and neutral force, aided by our allies. This is against the stream of history here, where the armed forces have traditionally been drawn into political conflicts and struggles. What gives us sustenance and hope is an increase in the numbers of those who volunteer for our armed forces, which we see as proof of the devotion of our people to the stability and success of our national government.

---

We have entered into a war, I want it known, against militias that had preyed upon the weakness of the national government and in the absence of law and order in some of our cities, even in some of the districts in Baghdad, imposed their own private laws--laws usually driven by extremism and a spirit of vengeance. Some of these militias presented themselves as defenders of their own respective communities against other militias. We believe that the best way to defeat these militias is to build and enhance the capabilities of our government as a defender of the rights of our citizens. A stable government cannot coexist with these militias.

Our conflict, it should be emphasized time and again, has been fueled by regional powers that have reached into our affairs. Iraq itself is eager to build decent relations with its neighbors. We don't wish to enter into regional entanglements. Our principle concern is to heal our country. We have reached out to those among our neighbors who are worried about the success and example of our democratic experiment, and to others who seem interested in enhancing their regional influence.

Our message has been the same to one and all: We will not permit Iraq to be a battleground for other powers. In the contests and ambitions swirling around Iraq, we are neutral and dedicated to our country's right to prosperity and a new life, inspired by a memory of a time when Baghdad was--as Washington is today--a beacon of enlightenment on which others gazed with admiration. We have come to believe, as Americans who founded your country once believed, that freedom is a precious inheritance. It is never cheap but the price is worth paying if we are to rescue our country.

Mr. Maliki is prime minister of Iraq.

[Used with permission from OpinionJournal.com, a web site from Dow Jones & Company, Inc.]

Evolution in weaponry

J.D. Johannes, embedded with our troops in Iraq, talks about the increasing sophistication of the terrorists' IEDs.

The IEDs and EFPs used now make the IEDs of 2005 look like firecrackers. The triggering devices used now are factory made, not the home-rigged devices of the past. The EFPs which shoot a fist-sized chunk of molten metal are precision explosives--milled and machined to a level of craftsmanship that is just not found in Iraq.

The strategy of ever spiraling countermeasures will never elminate the threat or achieve an end state. We add more armor, they make bigger bombs. We put radio jammers on humvees, they go to pressure plate or wire det by remote. We turn humvees into bank vaults they use EFPs. We will come up with a counter measure to the EFP, and they will build something else.

More evidence that the terrorists are being supported by one or more nation-states. Anyone care to guess which one?

Real news

Michael Yon provides an in-depth report about the arrest of a corrupt Iraqi police commissioner and it's aftermath. The tragedy of all this is that "General Hamid" was also one of the heroes who cleaned up the city of Hit.

Many people in Hit directly attribute the resurrection of this city in large part to the courage of Iraqi Police General Ibrahim Hamid Jaza (General Hamid), who took an aggressive stand against the Al Qaeda (AQI) terrorists who had brazenly made Anbar province a home base and slaughter pad with their marketplace car bombs, beheadings, and reputation for hiding bombs intended to kill parents in the corpses of dead children they’d gutted.

Over time, AQI provided ample demonstrations of their ruthless and reckless abuses of power over civilians, shooting people for using the Internet, or watching television, or other “moral transgressions” such as smoking in public. AQI’s claim of fundamentalist piety proved to be a thin veneer that was quickly eroded by blatant drug, alcohol and prostitute use. The people of Anbar rejected AQI, but AQI was still strong and well-armed, so rejection was only a first step.

AQI operatives are not amenable to change, so there was killing to be done. General Hamid was one of the brave souls who took an early stand and went for their throats. In doing so, he demonstrated that the terrorists were also vulnerable. Some soldiers in the Task Force 2-7 began to jokingly refer to the general as “Bufford Pusser” because Hamid literally carried a big stick. But AQI wasn’t laughing; they beheaded Hamid’s son on a soccer field in the center of Hit in 2005.

I highly recommend that you read the whole thing.

And, when you've finished, you can read an update on the aftermath of the arrest that Glenn Reynolds has posted. I've reprinted it in the extended entry below . . .

MICHAEL YON EMAILS:

Many readers are asking about the situation in Hit, Iraq after LTC Doug Crissman arrested General Hamid. http://www.michaelyon-online.com/wp/the-final-option.htm

In response to overwhelming reader inquiries, I asked LTC Crissman if he would address the public at home and give folks an idea of the outcome. LTC Crissman just responded via email. This posting is with his permission. The outcome is as fascinating as the arrest:

Mike,

The Hit City Council now unanimously stands behind the nomination for Gen Hamid's replacement. Though I haven't spoken to him myself, the Provincial Chief of Police reportedly also concurs and has forwarded our nomination to the Anbar Provincial Council for their final review/approval. We're still working hard to reschedule the visit by the Governor, Provincial Council Chairman and Provincial Chief of Police which was cancelled due to weather last Saturday. Through Coalition channels, we continue to encourage a sense of urgency for the Anbar Provincial Government so we can get a new guy into the seat ASAP. In the meantime, I've met with the incumbent several times already and truly believe he'll be the professional we need to get this Police Force on the right track. A career officer from the Iraqi Army, he thinks, looks, and acts like a soldier...which is exactly what we need here in Hit. Yesterday, he recommended 3 other retired/former members of the Iraqi Army to be hired as members of the Hit District Staff -- all of whom have impressive credentials and skill sets we've been trying to build ourselves.

After about 72 hours of increased Coalition Force presence and a stricter curfew in Hit, we've now returned to business as usual. There are still those who feel Hamid should have merely been fired rather than detained, but the overwhelming majority agrees what we did needed to be done...and I continue to remind them that they asked us to do it...repeatedly.

Doug

The fortunes of war . . .

. . . sometimes break your way.

"He says he knows who planted the IED," the interpreter said.

Captain Gregory stood there dumbfounded...

Go read the rest.

America's heroes

Somehow I missed this, but (thankfully) Sarah over at trying to grok linked to it, and I thought I'd point out the article as well. It's a keeper.

It captures the essence of America.

Recommended. Highly.

I've posted it in the extended entry.

America's Honor
The stories behind Memorial Day.

BY PETER COLLIER
Monday, May 28, 2007 12:01 a.m. EDT

Once we knew who and what to honor on Memorial Day: those who had given all their tomorrows, as was said of the men who stormed the beaches of Normandy, for our todays. But in a world saturated with selfhood, where every death is by definition a death in vain, the notion of sacrifice today provokes puzzlement more often than admiration. We support the troops, of course, but we also believe that war, being hell, can easily touch them with an evil no cause for engagement can wash away. And in any case we are more comfortable supporting them as victims than as warriors.

Former football star Pat Tillman and Marine Cpl. Jason Dunham were killed on the same day: April 22, 2004. But as details of his death fitfully emerged from Afghanistan, Tillman has become a metaphor for the current conflict--a victim of fratricide, disillusionment, coverup and possibly conspiracy. By comparison, Dunham, who saved several of his comrades in Iraq by falling on an insurgent's grenade, is the unknown soldier. The New York Times, which featured Abu Ghraib on its front page for 32 consecutive days, put the story of Dunham's Medal of Honor on the third page of section B.

Not long ago I was asked to write the biographical sketches for a book featuring formal photographs of all our living Medal of Honor recipients. As I talked with them, I was, of course, chilled by the primal power of their stories. But I also felt pathos: They had become strangers--honored strangers, but strangers nonetheless--in our midst.

---

In my own boyhood, figures such as Jimmy Doolittle, Audie Murphy and John Basilone were household names. And it was assumed that what they had done defined us as well as them, telling us what kind of nation we were. But the 110 Medal recipients alive today are virtually unknown except for a niche audience of warfare buffs. Their heroism has become the military equivalent of genre painting. There's something wrong with that.

What they did in battle was extraordinary. Jose Lopez, a diminutive Mexican-American from the barrio of San Antonio, was in the Ardennes forest when the Germans began the counteroffensive that became the Battle of the Bulge. As 10 enemy soldiers approached his position, he grabbed a machine gun and opened fire, killing them all. He killed two dozen more who rushed him. Knocked down by the concussion of German shells, he picked himself up, packed his weapon on his back and ran toward a group of Americans about to be surrounded. He began firing and didn't stop until all his ammunition and all that he could scrounge from other guns was gone. By then he had killed over 100 of the enemy and bought his comrades time to establish a defensive line.

Yet their stories were not only about killing. Several Medal of Honor recipients told me that the first thing they did after the battle was to find a church or some other secluded spot where they could pray, not only for those comrades they'd lost but also the enemy they'd killed.

Desmond Doss, for instance, was a conscientious objector who entered the army in 1942 and became a medic. Because of his religious convictions and refusal to carry a weapon, the men in his unit intimidated and threatened him, trying to get him to transfer out. He refused and they grudgingly accepted him. Late in 1945 he was with them in Okinawa when they got cut to pieces assaulting a Japanese stronghold.

Everyone but Mr. Doss retreated from the rocky plateau where dozens of wounded remained. Under fire, he treated them and then began moving them one by one to a steep escarpment where he roped them down to safety. Each time he succeeded, he prayed, "Dear God, please let me get just one more man." By the end of the day, he had single-handedly saved 75 GIs.

Why did they do it? Some talked of entering a zone of slow-motion invulnerability, where they were spectators at their own heroism. But for most, the answer was simpler and more straightforward: They couldn't let their buddies down.

Big for his age at 14, Jack Lucas begged his mother to help him enlist after Pearl Harbor. She collaborated in lying about his age in return for his promise to someday finish school. After training at Parris Island, he was sent to Honolulu. When his unit boarded a troop ship for Iwo Jima, Mr. Lucas was ordered to remain behind for guard duty. He stowed away to be with his friends and, discovered two days out at sea, convinced his commanding officer to put him in a combat unit rather than the brig. He had just turned 17 when he hit the beach, and a day later he was fighting in a Japanese trench when he saw two grenades land near his comrades.

He threw himself onto the grenades and absorbed the explosion. Later a medic, assuming he was dead, was about to take his dog tag when he saw Mr. Lucas's finger twitch. After months of treatment and recovery, he returned to school as he'd promised his mother, a ninth-grader wearing a Medal of Honor around his neck.

---

The men in World War II always knew, although news coverage was sometimes scant, that they were in some sense performing for the people at home. The audience dwindled during Korea. By the Vietnam War, the journalists were omnipresent, but the men were performing primarily for each other. One story that expresses this isolation and comradeship involves a SEAL team ambushed on a beach after an aborted mission near North Vietnam's Cua Viet river base.

After a five-hour gunfight, Cmdr. Tom Norris, already a legend thanks to his part in a harrowing rescue mission for a downed pilot (later dramatized in the film BAT-21), stayed behind to provide covering fire while the three others headed to rendezvous with the boat sent to extract them. At the water's edge, one of the men, Mike Thornton, looked back and saw Tom Norris get hit. As the enemy moved in, he ran back through heavy fire and killed two North Vietnamese standing over Norris's body. He lifted the officer, barely alive with a shattered skull, and carried him to the water and then swam out to sea where they were picked up two hours later.

The two men have been inseparable in the 30 years since.

The POWs of Vietnam configured a mini-America in prison that upheld the values beginning to wilt at home as a result of protest and dissension. John McCain tells of Lance Sijan, an airman who ejected over North Vietnam and survived for six weeks crawling (because of his wounds) through the jungle before being captured.

Close to death when he reached Hanoi, Sijan told his captors that he would give them no information because it was against the code of conduct. When not delirious, he quizzed his cellmates about camp security and made plans to escape. The North Vietnamese were obsessed with breaking him, but never did. When he died after long sessions of torture Sijan was, in Sen. McCain's words, "a free man from a free country."

Leo Thorsness was also at the Hanoi Hilton. The Air Force pilot had taken on four MiGs trying to strafe his wingman who had parachuted out of his damaged aircraft; Mr. Thorsness destroyed two and drove off the other two. He was shot down himself soon after this engagement and found out by tap code that his name had been submitted for the Medal.

One of Mr. Thorsness's most vivid memories from seven years of imprisonment involved a fellow prisoner named Mike Christian, who one day found a grimy piece of cloth, perhaps a former handkerchief, during a visit to the nasty concrete tank where the POWs were occasionally allowed a quick sponge bath. Christian picked up the scrap of fabric and hid it.

Back in his cell he convinced prisoners to give him precious crumbs of soap so he could clean the cloth. He stole a small piece of roof tile which he laboriously ground into a powder, mixed with a bit of water and used to make horizontal stripes. He used one of the blue pills of unknown provenance the prisoners were given for all ailments to color a square in the upper left of the cloth. With a needle made from bamboo wood and thread unraveled from the cell's one blanket, Christian stitched little stars on the blue field.

"It took Mike a couple weeks to finish, working at night under his mosquito net so the guards couldn't see him," Mr. Thorsness told me. "Early one morning, he got up before the guards were active and held up the little flag, waving it as if in a breeze. We turned to him and saw it coming to attention and automatically saluted, some of us with tears running down our cheeks. Of course, the Vietnamese found it during a strip search, took Mike to the torture cell and beat him unmercifully. Sometime after midnight they pushed him into our cell, so bad off that even his voice was gone. But when he recovered in a couple weeks he immediately started looking for another piece of cloth."

---

We impoverish ourselves by shunting these heroes and their experiences to the back pages of our national consciousness. Their stories are not just boys' adventure tales writ large. They are a kind of moral instruction. They remind of something we've heard many times before but is worth repeating on a wartime Memorial Day when we're uncertain about what we celebrate. We're the land of the free for one reason only: We're also the home of the brave.

Mr. Collier wrote the text for "Medal of Honor: Portraits of Valor Beyond the Call of Duty" (Workman, 2006).

[Used with permission from OpinionJournal.com, a web site from Dow Jones & Company, Inc.]

Fat Guy and the Three Home Dudes

JD Johannes, reporting from Baghdad, provides an interesting story about the 1-28 Black Lions' successful efforts to capture a Sadr army commander. In the process, they saved another man's life.

Here's how he starts:

"Hey Sir, there's fat little dude with a broken arm!" Specialist Parker yelled down from the gunner's turret in the Humvee.

With those words the hunt for the Jaysha Mahdi militia boss in Baghdad's Mahala 885 moved from tips from informants to intelligence databases, to humvees to a foot race.

Go read the whole article. There is video, as well. It's definitely worth it !

National shame

Chief Warrant Officer Jim Funk, of the Iowa National Guard, is in Iraq and has written to friends and family this accurate assessment of the media's role in the Iraq conflict.

"Hello media, do you know you indirectly kill American soldiers every day? You inspire and report the enemy's objective every day. You are the enemy's greatest weapon. The enemy cannot beat us on the battlefield so all he does is try to wreak enough havoc and have you report it every day. With you and the enemy using each other, you continually break the will of the American public and American government.

Read the whole thing.

Kerrey gets it

Retired Democrat senator and former member of the 9-11 commission, Bob Kerrey, has some interesting things to say about Iraq and the political Left. He also has some pointed things to say to you and I.

It's all in the extended entry.

The Left's Iraq Muddle
Yes, it is central to the fight against Islamic radicalism.

BY BOB KERREY
Tuesday, May 22, 2007 12:01 a.m. EDT

At this year's graduation celebration at The New School in New York, Iranian lawyer, human-rights activist and Nobel laureate Shirin Ebadi delivered our commencement address. This brave woman, who has been imprisoned for her criticism of the Iranian government, had many good and wise things to say to our graduates, which earned their applause.

But one applause line troubled me. Ms. Ebadi said: "Democracy cannot be imposed with military force."

What troubled me about this statement--a commonly heard criticism of U.S. involvement in Iraq--is that those who say such things seem to forget the good U.S. arms have done in imposing democracy on countries like Japan and Germany, or Bosnia more recently.

---

Let me restate the case for this Iraq war from the U.S. point of view. The U.S. led an invasion to overthrow Saddam Hussein because Iraq was rightly seen as a threat following Sept. 11, 2001. For two decades we had suffered attacks by radical Islamic groups but were lulled into a false sense of complacency because all previous attacks were "over there." It was our nation and our people who had been identified by Osama bin Laden as the "head of the snake." But suddenly Middle Eastern radicals had demonstrated extraordinary capacity to reach our shores.

As for Saddam, he had refused to comply with numerous U.N. Security Council resolutions outlining specific requirements related to disclosure of his weapons programs. He could have complied with the Security Council resolutions with the greatest of ease. He chose not to because he was stealing and extorting billions of dollars from the U.N. Oil for Food program.

No matter how incompetent the Bush administration and no matter how poorly they chose their words to describe themselves and their political opponents, Iraq was a larger national security risk after Sept. 11 than it was before. And no matter how much we might want to turn the clock back and either avoid the invasion itself or the blunders that followed, we cannot. The war to overthrow Saddam Hussein is over. What remains is a war to overthrow the government of Iraq.

Some who have been critical of this effort from the beginning have consistently based their opposition on their preference for a dictator we can control or contain at a much lower cost. From the start they said the price tag for creating an environment where democracy could take root in Iraq would be high. Those critics can go to sleep at night knowing they were right.

The critics who bother me the most are those who ordinarily would not be on the side of supporting dictatorships, who are arguing today that only military intervention can prevent the genocide of Darfur, or who argued yesterday for military intervention in Bosnia, Somalia and Rwanda to ease the sectarian violence that was tearing those places apart.

Suppose we had not invaded Iraq and Hussein had been overthrown by Shiite and Kurdish insurgents. Suppose al Qaeda then undermined their new democracy and inflamed sectarian tensions to the same level of violence we are seeing today. Wouldn't you expect the same people who are urging a unilateral and immediate withdrawal to be urging military intervention to end this carnage? I would.

American liberals need to face these truths: The demand for self-government was and remains strong in Iraq despite all our mistakes and the violent efforts of al Qaeda, Sunni insurgents and Shiite militias to disrupt it. Al Qaeda in particular has targeted for abduction and murder those who are essential to a functioning democracy: school teachers, aid workers, private contractors working to rebuild Iraq's infrastructure, police officers and anyone who cooperates with the Iraqi government. Much of Iraq's middle class has fled the country in fear.

With these facts on the scales, what does your conscience tell you to do? If the answer is nothing, that it is not our responsibility or that this is all about oil, then no wonder today we Democrats are not trusted with the reins of power. American lawmakers who are watching public opinion tell them to move away from Iraq as quickly as possible should remember this: Concessions will not work with either al Qaeda or other foreign fighters who will not rest until they have killed or driven into exile the last remaining Iraqi who favors democracy.

The key question for Congress is whether or not Iraq has become the primary battleground against the same radical Islamists who declared war on the U.S. in the 1990s and who have carried out a series of terrorist operations including 9/11. The answer is emphatically "yes."

This does not mean that Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9/11; he was not. Nor does it mean that the war to overthrow him was justified--though I believe it was. It only means that a unilateral withdrawal from Iraq would hand Osama bin Laden a substantial psychological victory.

---

Those who argue that radical Islamic terrorism has arrived in Iraq because of the U.S.-led invasion are right. But they are right because radical Islam opposes democracy in Iraq. If our purpose had been to substitute a dictator who was more cooperative and supportive of the West, these groups wouldn't have lasted a week.

Finally, Jim Webb said something during his campaign for the Senate that should be emblazoned on the desks of all 535 members of Congress: You do not have to occupy a country in order to fight the terrorists who are inside it. Upon that truth I believe it is possible to build what doesn't exist today in Washington: a bipartisan strategy to deal with the long-term threat of terrorism.

The American people will need that consensus regardless of when, and under what circumstances, we withdraw U.S. forces from Iraq. We must not allow terrorist sanctuaries to develop any place on earth. Whether these fighters are finding refuge in Syria, Iran, Pakistan or elsewhere, we cannot afford diplomatic or political excuses to prevent us from using military force to eliminate them.

Mr. Kerrey, a former Democratic senator from Nebraska and member of the 9/11 Commission, is president of The New School.

[Used with permission from OpinionJournal.com, a web site from Dow Jones & Company, Inc.]

Mohammed's plea

Mohammed Fadhil, a dentist living and working in Baghdad shows us some of the same spirit that made America great -- and asks the U.S. to stay in Iraq.

I wasn't surprised when I saw Al Qaeda's second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahiri, appear on Al Jazeera to announce America's defeat last week, not long after U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid did. Zawahiri claims Al Qaeda has won, and Reid claims America has lost.

But from here in Baghdad, I see only a war that's still raging - with no victory in sight for Al Qaeda or any other entity. In fact, I see Al Qaeda on the ropes, losing support among my fellow Iraqis.

In the midst of such a fierce war, sending more wrong messages could only further complicate an already complicated situation. It would only create more of a mess inside Iraq - a mess that would then be exploited by Iran, Syria and Saudi Arabia for their own purposes: more iron-fisted control of the peoples and treasures of the region, more pushing the Middle East to crises and confrontations, and more spreading of their dark, backward ideologies.

And so, as an Iraqi, I say without hesitation: the American forces should stay here, and further reinforcements should be sent if the situation requires them. Not only that, these forces should be prepared to expand their operations whenever and wherever necessary to strike hard at the nests of evil that not only threaten Iraq and the Middle East, but seek to blackmail the whole world in the ugliest way through pursuing nuclear weapons.

Americans who openly advocate abandoning Iraq to the terrorists should be ashamed of themselves.

Read the whole thing.

Press on in Iraq

Bill Kristol, at The Weekly Standard , has some good non-partisan points to make about our politicians' lemming-like march to defeat. He quotes from an email from a friend who is currently in Iraq:

"It will be a tragedy and an unforgivable crime if we abandon the Iraqis who are fighting with us. It will really be a black spot on our history far worse than Vietnam. . . . It will set back any effort to achieve positive effects in the Muslim world, and especially the Arab world. . . . A senior Iraqi officer I spoke to today told me that any Iraqi who says that America should withdraw soon is not a real Iraqi. Only the militia and the insurgents, he said, want us to leave. He is right. If we withdraw now, we will be acting at the behest of our worst enemies, snatching defeat against al Qaeda from the jaws of victory, and strengthening all of the worst actors in this region. The Iraqi people do not want us to leave. . . .

There's quite a bit more.

Highly recommended.

In search of: the civil war

J.D. Johannes is in Baghdad, living out among the Iraqi Police. He reports that he cannot find a civil war in Baghdad, and wonders openly about its existence.

After spending 2 weeks looking for the civil war raging in Baghdad I've decided that Arabs must do civil wars the way they do everything else--lackadaisically.

In most neighborhoods I saw Sunni living next to Shia living next to Catholic. Yes, Sunnis, living next door to Shias who live next door to Catholics.

And they weren't shooting at each other all day and only the Catholic had any religious/sectarian symbols visible--statue of the Virgin in the dining room.

He goes on to report that the new plan is working and that the biggest barriers to success are the media and the Iraqi government:

The Baghdad Security Plan is working and can achieve an endstate. It took the Brits 12 years in Maylaya. We are following their plan.

The biggest enemy we have is an over active media and spineless Host Nation government which is intimidated by the JAM [.Ed. note: JAM = Jaysh al Mahdi] and has the JAM as key constituent group.

Shortly after I arrived in Baghdad the big news was of some residents protesting the Army putting in check points and walling off entry and exit routs in certain Mahalas.

But, after spending two weeks rolling around the Mahalas I've noticed that both Sunni and Shia areas are surrounded by homemade barriers blocking roads and serpentine blockades to slow traffic in and out of the neighborhoods.

I get a funny feeling those protests may have been astroturfed by JAM to get the government to be less agressive with the safe neighborhood program.

Go read the whole thing.

Real progress in Iraq

Bill Roggio reports that, like the tribal leaders in Anbar province, tribal leaders in Diyala province are banding together to destroy Al Qaeda in the region.

In March, we noted the successful model of the Anbar Salvation Council will very likely be replicated elsewhere in regions where al Qaeda has established bases of operation. We singled out Diyala in particular, as al Qaeda's campaign of murder and intimidation was beginning to anger the tribes much as it did in Anbar province. Al Qaeda's establishment of its Islamic State of Iraq, with its capital in Baqubah made the province ripe for a major Coalition operation in the region. In early March, Al Sabaah reported the local sheikhs in Diyala were organizing against al-Qaeda and its Islamic State of Iraq, "which [is] spreading corruption in the province districts." Today, the speculation has become a reality, as "Arab tribesmen in Baqubah have said they will form a tribal alliance to cleanse the Diyala province of foreign fighters and those of the al-Qaeda terrorist network in Iraq."

"Tribesman Sheikh Wameed al-Jabouri told al-Hayat that a number of tribes had signed a cooperation agreement to undertake this mission and to bring the city back to how 'it used to be,'" notes DPA. "The agreement could be considered "a national charter" that proves their rejection of the actions of the terrorist groups, al-Jabouri said."

This is a good thing. Iraqis are standing up to fight for their own freedom. Our efforts there are beginning to pay off.

Stay tuned.

History lesson

Charles Krauthammer provides us with the actual recent history of America going to war in Iraq. You'll find that it differs significantly with what the mainstream media and some irresponsible politicians would want us to believe.

The decision to go to war was made by a war cabinet consisting of George Bush, Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell and Donald Rumsfeld. No one in that room could even remotely be considered a neoconservative. Nor could the most important non-American supporter of the war to this day -- Tony Blair, father of new Labor.

The most powerful case for the war was made at the 2004 Republican convention by John McCain in a speech that was resolutely "realist." On the Democratic side, every presidential candidate running today who was in the Senate when the motion to authorize the use of force came up -- Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, Joe Biden and Chris Dodd-- voted yes.

Outside of government, the case for war was made not just by the neoconservative Weekly Standard but -- to select almost randomly -- the traditionally conservative National Review, the liberal New Republic and the center-right Economist. Of course, most neoconservatives supported the war, the case for which was also being made by journalists and scholars from every point on the political spectrum -- from the leftist Christopher Hitchens to the liberal Tom Friedman to the centrist Fareed Zakaria to the center-right Michael Kelly to the Tory Andrew Sullivan. And the most influential tome on behalf of war was written not by any conservative, let alone neoconservative, but by Kenneth Pollack, Clinton's top Near East official on the National Security Council. The title: "The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq."

Everyone has the right to renounce past views. But not to make up that past. It is beyond brazen to think that one can get away with inventing not ancient history but what everyone saw and read with their own eyes just a few years ago. And yet sometimes brazenness works.

The essay has many reference links. I recommend you read it all.

[Via Betsy's Page.]

It's working

J.D. Johannes reports from Al Anbar Province in Iraq, that the surge tactics are working.

In fact, the situation has flipped so much in 7 months that the heavy lifting in Al Anbar may be coming to a close--the heavy lifting being the political work of flipping the tribes to support the coalition and take charge of their own security.

When I was in Anbar in 2005 the momentum changed back and forth with the insurgents often dictating the OODA loop.

Now, in some areas like Khalidiyah, Habbaniyah and Husabayah Jawal, the coalition, police and army are clearly dictating the OODA loop.

All down the west bank of the Euphrates the tribes are taking charge of their own security, tribal levies are being sent to the police academies and army boot camp and the real sheiks--not the deputy under sheiks for mutton affairs--are working with the coalition.

Is it still violent? You bet. Will AQIZ still be able to pull off some big bombs? Yes. Will they still be able to mount coordinated attacks in some AOs? Yes.

But those are not the indicators. Nieghborhood watch centers, women in the markets, growth in IP and pro-coalition tribes duking it out with the remaining AQIZ affiliated tribes are the indicators.

Why we fight

Because the enemy are vicious child killers, that's why.

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- American soldiers discovered a girls school being built north of Baghdad had become an explosives-rigged "death trap," the U.S. military said Thursday.

The plot at the Huda Girls' school in Tarmiya was a "sophisticated and premeditated attempt to inflict massive casualties on our most innocent victims," military spokesman Maj. Gen. William Caldwell said.

The military suspects the plot was the work of al Qaeda, because of its nature and sophistication, Caldwell said in an interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer.

We win, they lose

It's as simple as that.

Here's the petition:

Help stop the insanity in Washington by signing this petition . . .

Surge and counter

Wretchard has posted an excellent analysis of the stroke/counterstroke nature of the war in Iraq. (Actually, a characteristic of all wars.)

The car-bomb attack on a US patrol base in Diyala which killed 9 soldiers is the first of two adapatations the Sunni insurgency to the Surge. As Max Boot wrote in the Weekly Standard before the attack, the insurgents have responded to the crackdown in Baghdad by moving elsewhere, not only to preserve their forces but to exploit places where the American presence has thinned out in order to provide forces for Baghdad.

[ . . .]

The attack on the American patrol base is the second adaptation. One of the principal innovations of General Petraeus has been to move US forces out of heavily defended mega-bases into smaller outposts they share with Iraqi Army and Police units. This redeployment into the field has three advantages. First, it overcomes the problems inherent in a dual chain of command caused by an American force operating in a legally sovereign country. Second, it shortens the decision cycle. Third, it reduces the dangers inherent in route marches from the mega-bases to the area of operations. Unfortunately, outposting American troops to smaller patrol bases probably means that each outpost is individually weaker than the mega base.

There is much more. I recommend it..

Remember the mission

Jeff Emanuel, over at RedState is currently in Iraq and talking to our troops. In his latest post, he relates several conversations concerning whether or not America should pull out of Iraq yet.

From snipers, to IEDs, to the dirty conditions, to the long days, week, and months of thankless work in a country which is still being stitched back together, there are a thousand reasons why the troops should be unhappy, and a thousand excuses for why they might be right to side with those who are calling for an immediate withdrawal. However, despite all of the negatives, the overwhelming consensus among those with whom I have spoken to this point is not a belief that we have done everything we can here, and should therefore leave. The belief amongst the troops here, as exemplified by the aforementioned infantry Captain’s statement, is that these people deserve a chance at a better way of life, and that, rather than abandon them to a fate of certain death at the hands of ruthless sectarians, insurgents, and terrorists, we should continue to do everything we can to help rebuild and secure this nation, and to smash those who would destroy what the Iraqi people are building before they can be successful in doing so.

Surrender is not an option to the American fighting force – and they know that very well. Abandoning Iraq while the mission is still unfinished is not an option being entertained by any of the soldiers with whom I have spoken to this point; rather, it appears to be solely the purview of those at home who think that they know better than the soldiers themselves what is good for them. What the troops appear to really want is to be given the support and the resources which will allow them to complete their mission – and, more than anything else, the time to do so successfully.

There is a lot of good information in this series of dispatches from Iraq. I highly recommend you go read them all and check back often to catch the latest posts.

Iraq assessment

Retired General Barry McCaffrey visited Iraq in March of this year, and filed an after action report that was forwarded to me from a trusted source. He makes a frank assessment of the situation in Iraq and our military's capacity to successfully accomplish the mission there -- including how it is affecting the troops.

We are at the “knee of the curve.” Two million+ troops of the smallest active Army force since WWII have served in the war zone. Some active units have served three, four, or even five combat deployments. We are now routinely extending nearly all combat units in both Iraq and Afghanistan. These combat units are being returned to action in some cases with only 7-12 months of stateside time to re-train and re-equip. The current deployment requirement of 20+ brigades to Iraq and 2+ brigades in Afghanistan is not sustainable.

We will be forced to call up as many as nine National Guard combat brigades for an involuntary second combat tour this coming year. (Dr Chu at DOD has termed this as “no big deal.”) Many believe that this second round of involuntary call-ups will topple the weakened National Guard structure--- which is so central to US domestic security. The National Guard Bureau has argued for a call up of only 12 months instead of 18 months. This misses the point—DOD will without fail be forced to also extend these National Guard brigades in combat at the last minute given the continuation of the current emergency situation.

Iraq’s neighbors are a problem--- not part of the solution (with the exception of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait). They provide little positive political or economic support to the Maliki government.

Our allies are leaving to include the courageous and well equipped Brit’s—by January 2008 we will be largely on our own.

In summary, the US Armed Forces are in a position of strategic peril. A disaster in Iraq will in all likelihood result in a widened regional struggle which will endanger America’s strategic interests (oil) in the Mid-east for a generation. We will also produce another generation of soldiers who lack confidence in their American politicians, the media, and their own senior military leadership.

He goes on to make a thorough examination of the situation in that country and finds some reason for optimism.

In my judgment, we can still achieve our objective of: a stable Iraq, at peace with its neighbors, not producing weapons of mass destruction, and fully committed to a law-based government. The courage and strength of the US Armed Forces still gives us latitude and time to build the economic and political conditions that might defuse the ongoing civil war. Our central purpose is to allow the nation to re-establish governance based on some loose federal consensus among the three major ethnic-factional actors. (Shia, Sunni, Kurd.)

But he cautions that we're running out of time:

We have very little time left. This President will have the remainder of his months in office beleaguered by his political opponents to the war. The democratic control of Congress and its vocal opposition can actually provide a helpful framework within which our brilliant new Ambassador Ryan Crocker can maneuver the Maliki administration to understand their diminishing options. It is very unlikely that the US political opposition can constitutionally force the President into retreat. However, our next President will only have 12 months or less to get Iraq straight before he/she is forced to pull the plug. Therefore, our planning horizons should assume that there are less than 36 months remaining of substantial US troop presence in Iraq. The insurgency will continue in some form for a decade. This suggests the fundamental dilemma facing US policymakers.

Download and read the whole thing.

A message from Iraq

J.D. Johannes has a post up with a message From Lt. Ala of the Iraq Army.

"Thank you for being here. Thank you. You are a reporter? Tell America how much we appreciate Marines. Tell the people thank you and that we want the Marines, the Army here to help us."

This from a man who has twice fought against American troops and became a field grade officer in Saddam Hussein's military.

I recommend you read the whole post . . .

The story of Jessica Lynch

Richard S. Lowry provides a well-researched perspective on the story of Jessica Lynch's capture and subsequent rescue. Here's how he begins:

TODAY, THE HOUSE Committee on Oversight and Government Reform chaired by Henry Waxman (D-CA) conducted a hearing into "misleading military statements" that followed the death of Pat Tillman and the ordeal of Jessica Lynch. I cannot speak of the Pat Tillman incident, but I can speak to the story of Jessica Lynch.

I spent more than two years of my life studying the battle of An Nasiriyah. I read thousands of pages of government reports and personally interviewed nearly one-hundred of the participants of the battle, including four survivors of the 507th Maintenance Company's ambush, several Marines who came upon the scene of the ambush, a young Marine who worked in the regimental intelligence shop and was responsible for the safekeeping of Jessica's personal effects, and several of the soldiers, sailors, and Marines who were actually involved in her rescue. The results of my research were published last year in Marines in the Garden of Eden.

Following her rescue, unsubstantiated reports abounded, the media made a variety of assertions: Jessica Lynch was a pretty teenage girl who had been subjected to the ravages of an unjust war. She had been sent into battle with inadequate equipment and protection. After taking a wrong turn, Iraqis feigning surrender had ambushed her unit. Yet, she bravely fought off the enemy until she could resist no longer. Because of the incompetence of the leadership in Washington, D.C., she had been taken prisoner by evil Iraqis who did unspeakable things to her.

This was the type of story that had "legs." Every news producer in America salivated when they read the first copy. They knew that their ratings would skyrocket when the story of this fragile American girl was told. This was the type of story that would go down in history. There was only one problem -- most of the story wasn't true.

Go read the rest.

[Via John at OPFOR.]

How our media is manipulated

J.D. Johannes, embedded with the Marines in Anbar Province, reports on a Washington Post report about a terrorist attack -- and then explains how the WaPo article is woefully inaccurate -- because he witnessed the attack in person.

Here is what really happened, along with some astute observations:

AQIZ's attack on Blackfoot, 1-501 was a dismal failure.

The two SVBIED plan is for the first to breach the wall or knock out a tower, allowing the second to enter the OP's compound.

The only thing the SVBIEDs accomplished was creating a crater 25-feet deep and 70-feet in diameter 50 yards from the south wall of OP Omar.

If a coalition assault on an AQIZ base ever failed so miserably, the press and certain members of Congress would be in an uproar. But AQI doesn't hold press conferences and conflates the facts in its press releases.

No American service members were killed. Only one was wounded seriously enough to warrant a medevac--a large piece of shrapnel in his arm.

The fact that AQIZ was able to stage a complex attack on OP Omar should be taken for what it was--an attempt at the spectacular that was a spectacular failure.

In the days after the attack, there was little no enemy contact in OP Omar's district and only limited contact in the Karmah AO.

I will not hazard a guess as to whether another complex attack is in the wings for Omar or any of the other OPs in Karmah, but my anecdotal experience is that once AQIZ gives it all they got in an area and fail, they lose their grip.

I expect as the debates rage in Congress, AQIZ will step up the rate of complex attacks.

The enemy was not able to dislodge the paratroopers of Blackfoot from OP Omar, but Congress may be more successful.

Go read this post -- and others in the Outside the Wire blog. It will open your eyes to the fact that when our news media gives us a glimpse of Iraq, we are looking through a glass darkly . . .

Clear, hold, and build . . .

. . . is working in Ramadi. Despite the Dishonorable Harry Reid's opinion.

Ramadi is not an isolated example. There is progress across Al Anbar province. According to coalition briefings, attacks in the province are at a two-year low. Tips to coalition forces are soaring. U.S. troops used to find only 50% of IEDs. Now they are defusing 80% before they detonate. (Al Qaeda in Iraq has responded with chlorine gas bombs. In other words, using chemical weapons against Sunni civilians — not a tactic likely to win over the populace.)

The question is whether this success can be replicated in Iraq's nerve center. The challenges in Baghdad are considerably more daunting because of its size (6 million residents versus 1.5 million in all of Al Anbar province) and its sectarian fault lines. And, even when the surge is completed in June, Baghdad will not have as many troops on a per capita basis as Ramadi.

But given enough time and resources, the "clear, hold and build" strategy that worked in Ramadi — and that has worked in Tall Afar, Qaim and other cities — could succeed in Baghdad too. Unless, of course, antiwar politicians back home succeed in pulling the plug, in which case defeat is guaranteed.

Maybe we've already won

J.D. Johannes, journalist and independent documentary maker, is currently embedded with the Marins in Anbar Provice, Iraq. He has a post in his blog that describes how the war is being won -- and how far it has succeeded in Anbar. Here's his conclusion:

A Marine Officer offered this thought to me, "could it be that we have won the war but are too dense to realize it?" From what I saw in Khalidiyah, I would say we are on track. Time will tell if the watchmen and IP will continue to progress and eventually choke out the jihadists. But from what I saw in my time, maybe they already have.

Read the whole post.

Iraq in the balance

Fouad Ajami has an excellent editorial at OpinionJournal about the current situation in Iraq -- and the dichotomy between Iraqis' perception of the war, and Americans'.

I've reprinted it in the extended entry.

You should read it.

Iraq in the Balance
In Washington, panic. In Baghdad, cautious optimism.

BY FOUAD AJAMI
Wednesday, April 11, 2007 12:01 a.m. EDT

BAGHDAD--For 35 years the sun did not shine here," said a man on the grounds of the great Shia shrine of al-Kadhimiyyah, on the outskirts of Baghdad. I had come to the shrine at night, in the company of the Shia politician Ahmed Chalabi.

We had driven in an armed convoy, and our presence had drawn a crowd. The place was bathed with light, framed by multiple minarets--a huge rectangular structure, its beauty and dereliction side by side. The tile work was exquisite, there were deep Persian carpets everywhere, the gifts of benefactors, rulers and merchants, drawn from the world of Shi'ism.

It was a cool spring night, and beguilingly tranquil. (There were the echoes of a firefight across the river, from the Sunni neighborhood of al-Adhamiyyah, but it was background noise and oddly easy to ignore.) A keeper of the shrine had been showing us the place, and he was proud of its doors made of teak from Burma--a kind of wood, he said, that resisted rain, wind and sun. It was to that description that the quiet man on the edge of this gathering had offered the thought that the sun had not risen during the long night of Baathist despotism.

---

A traveler who moves between Baghdad and Washington is struck by the gloomy despair in Washington and the cautious sense of optimism in Baghdad. Baghdad has not been prettified; its streets remain a sore to the eye, its government still hunkered down in the Green Zone, and violence is never far. But the sense of deliverance, and the hopes invested in this new security plan, are palpable. I crisscrossed the city--always with armed protection--making my way to Sunni and Shia politicians and clerics alike. The Sunni and Shia versions of political things--of reality itself--remain at odds. But there can be discerned, through the acrimony, the emergence of a fragile consensus.

Some months back, the Bush administration had called into question both the intentions and capabilities of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki. But this modest and earnest man, born in 1950, a child of the Shia mainstream in the Middle Euphrates, has come into his own. He had not been a figure of the American regency in Baghdad. Steeped entirely in the Arabic language and culture, he had a been a stranger to the Americans; fate cast him on the scene when the Americans pushed aside Mr. Maliki's colleague in the Daawa Party, Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari.

There had been rumors that the Americans could strike again in their search for a leader who would give the American presence better cover. There had been steady talk that the old CIA standby, former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, could make his way back to power. Mr. Allawi himself had fed these speculations, but this is fantasy. Mr. Allawi circles Arab capitals and is rarely at home in his country. Mr. Maliki meanwhile has settled into his role.

In retrospect, the defining moment for Mr. Maliki had been those early hours of Dec. 30, when Saddam Hussein was sent to the gallows. He had not flinched, the decision was his, and he assumed it. Beyond the sound and fury of the controversy that greeted the execution, Mr. Maliki had taken the execution as a warrant for a new accommodation with the Sunni political class. A lifelong opponent of the Baath, he had come to the judgment that the back of the apparatus of the old regime had been broken, and that the time had come for an olive branch to those ready to accept the new political rules.

When I called on Mr. Maliki at his residence, a law offering pensions to the former officers of the Iraqi army had been readied and was soon put into effect. That decision had been supported by the head of the de-Baathification commission, Ahmed Chalabi. A proposal for a deeper reversal of the de-Baathification process was in the works, and would be announced days later by Mr. Maliki and President Jalal Talabani. This was in truth Zalmay Khalilzad's doing, his attempt to bury the entire de-Baathification effort as his tenure drew to a close.

This was more than the political traffic in the Shia community could bear. Few were ready to accept the return of old Baathists to government service. The victims of the old terror were appalled at a piece of this legislation, giving them a period of only three months to bring charges against their former tormentors. This had not been Mr. Maliki's choice--for his animus toward the Baath has been the driving force of his political life. It was known that he trusted that the religious hierarchy in Najaf, and the forces within the Shia alliance, would rein in this drive toward rehabilitating the remnants of the old regime.

Power and experience have clearly changed Mr. Maliki as he makes his way between the Shia coalition that sustains him on the one hand, and the American presence on the other. By all accounts, he is increasingly independent of the diehards in his own coalition--another dividend of the high-profile executions of Saddam Hussein and three of the tyrant's principal lieutenants. He is surrounded by old associates drawn from the Daawa Party, but keeps his own counsel.

There is a built-in tension between a prime minister keen to press for his own prerogatives and an American military presence that underpins the security of this new order. Mr. Maliki does not have the access to American military arms he would like; he does not have control over an Iraqi special-forces brigade that the Americans had trained and nurtured. His police forces remain poorly equipped. The levers of power are not fully his, and he knows it. Not a student of American ways--he spent his years of exile mostly in Syria--he is fully aware of the American exhaustion with Iraq as leading American politicians have come his way often.

The nightmare of this government is that of a precipitous American withdrawal. Six months ago, the British quit the southern city of Amarrah, the capital of the Maysan Province. It had been, by Iraqi accounts, a precipitous British decision, and the forces of Moqtada al-Sadr had rushed into the void; they had looted the barracks and overpowered the police. Amarrah haunts the Iraqis in the circle of power--the prospect of Americans leaving this government to fend for itself.

In the long scheme of history, the Shia Arabs had never governed--and Mr. Maliki and the coalition arrayed around him know their isolation in the region. This Iraqi state of which they had become the principal inheritors will have to make its way in a hostile regional landscape. Set aside Turkey's Islamist government, with its avowedly Sunni mindset and its sense of itself as a claimant to an older Ottoman tradition; the Arab order of power is yet to make room for this Iraqi state. Mr. Maliki's first trip beyond Iraq's borders had been to Saudi Arabia. He had meant that visit as a message that Iraq's "Arab identity" will trump all other orientations. It had been a message that the Arab world's Shia stepchildren were ready to come into the fold. But a huge historical contest had erupted in Baghdad, the seat of the Abbasid caliphate had fallen to new Shia inheritors, and the custodians of Arab power were not yet ready for this new history.

For one, the "Sunni street"--the Islamists, the pan-Arabists who hid their anti-Shia animus underneath a secular cover, the intellectual class that had been invested in the ideology of the Baath party--remained unalterably opposed to this new Iraq. The Shia could offer the Arab rulers the promise that their new state would refrain from regional adventures, but it would not be easy for these rulers to come to this accommodation.

A worldly Shia cleric, the legislator Humam Hamoudi who had headed the constitutional drafting committee, told me that he had laid out to interlocutors from the House of Saud the case that this new Iraqi state would be a better neighbor than the Sunni-based state of Saddam Hussein had been. "We would not be given to military adventures beyond our borders, what wealth we have at our disposal would have to go to repairing our homeland, for you we would be easier to fend off for we are Shiites and would be cognizant and respectful of the differences between us," Mr. Hamoudi had said. "You had a fellow Sunni in Baghdad for more than three decades, and look what terrible harvest, what wreckage, he left behind." This sort of appeal is yet to be heard, for this change in Baghdad is a break with a long millennium of Sunni Arab primacy.

---

The blunt truth of this new phase in the fight for Iraq is that the Sunnis have lost the battle for Baghdad. The great flight from Baghdad to Jordan, to Syria, to other Arab destinations, has been the flight of Baghdad's Sunni middle-class. It is they who had the means of escape, and the savings.

Whole mixed districts in the city--Rasafa, Karkh--have been emptied of their Sunni populations. Even the old Sunni neighborhood of Adhamiyyah is embattled and besieged. What remains for the Sunnis are the western outskirts. This was the tragic logic of the campaign of terror waged by the Baathists and the jihadists against the Shia; this was what played out in the terrible year that followed the attack on the Askariya shrine of Samarra in February 2006. Possessed of an old notion of their own dominion, and of Shia passivity and quiescence, the Sunni Arabs waged a war they were destined to lose.

No one knows with any precision the sectarian composition of today's Baghdad, but there are estimates that the Sunnis may now account for 15% of the city's population. Behind closed doors, Sunni leaders speak of the great calamity that befell their community. They admit to a great disappointment in the Arab states that fed the flames but could never alter the contest on the ground in Iraq. No Arab cavalry had ridden, or was ever going to ride, to the rescue of the Sunnis of Iraq.

A cultured member of the (Sunni) Association of Muslim Scholars in Baghdad, a younger man of deep moderation, likened the dilemma of his community to that of the Palestinian Arabs since 1948. "They waited for deliverance that never came," he said. "Like them, we placed our hopes in Arab leaders who have their own concerns. We fell for those Arab satellite channels, we believed that Arab brigades would turn up in Anbar and Baghdad. We made room for al Qaeda only to have them turn on us in Anbar." There had once been a Sunni maxim in Iraq, "for us ruling and power, for you self-flagellation," that branded the Shia as a people of sorrow and quietism. Now the ground has shifted, and among the Sunnis there is a widespread sentiment of disinheritance and loss.

The Mahdi Army, more precisely the underclass of Sadr City, had won the fight for Baghdad. This Shia underclass had been hurled into the city from its ancestral lands in the Marshes and the Middle Euphrates. In a cruel twist of irony, Baathist terror had driven these people into the slums of Baghdad. The Baathist tyranny had cut down the palm trees in the south, burned the reed beds of the Marshes. Then the campaign of terror that Sunni society sheltered and abetted in the aftermath of the despot's fall gave the Mahdi Army its cause and its power.

"The Mahdi Army protected us and our lands, our homes, and our honor," said a tribal Shia notable in a meeting in Baghdad, acknowledging that it was perhaps time for the boys of Moqtada al-Sadr to step aside in favor of the government forces. He laid bare, as he spoke, the terrible complications of this country; six of his sisters, he said, were married to Sunnis, countless nephews of his were Sunni. Violence had hacked away at this pluralism; no one could be certain when, and if, the place could mend.

---

In their grief, the Sunni Arabs have fallen back on the most unexpected of hopes; having warred against the Americans, they now see them as redeemers. "This government is an American creation," a powerful Sunni legislator, Saleh al-Mutlak, said. "It is up to the Americans to replace it, change the constitution that was imposed on us, replace this incompetent, sectarian government with a government of national unity, a cabinet of technocrats." Shrewd and alert to the ways of the world (he has a Ph.D. in soil science from a university in the U.K.) Mr. Mutlak gave voice to a wider Sunni conviction that this order in Baghdad is but an American puppet. America and Iran may be at odds in the region, but the Sunni Arabs see an American-Persian conspiracy that had robbed them of their patrimony.

They had made their own bed, the Sunni Arabs, but old habits of dominion die hard, and save but for a few, there is precious little acknowledgment of the wages of the terror that the Shia had been subjected to in the years that followed the American invasion. As matters stand, the Sunni Arabs are in desperate need of leaders who can call off the violence, cut a favorable deal for their community, and distance that community form the temptations and the ruin of the insurgency. It is late in the hour, but there is still eagerness in the Maliki government to conciliate the Sunnis, if only to give the country a chance at normalcy.

The Shia have come into their own, but there still hovers over them their old history of dispossession; there still trails shadows of doubt about their hold on power, about conspiracies hatched against them in neighboring Arab lands.

The Americans have given birth to this new Shia primacy, but there lingers a fear, in the inner circles of the Shia coalition, that the Americans have in mind a Sunni-based army, of the Pakistani and Turkish mold, that would upend the democratic, majoritarian bases of power on which Shia primacy rests. They are keenly aware, these new Shia men of power in Baghdad, that the Pax Americana in the region is based on an alliance of long standing with the Sunni regimes. They are under no illusions about their own access to Washington when compared with that of Cairo, Riyadh, Amman and the smaller principalities of the Persian Gulf. This suspicion is in the nature of things; it is the way of once marginal men who had come into an unexpected triumph.

In truth, it is not only the Arab order of power that remains ill at ease with the rise of the Shia of Iraq. The (Shia) genie that came out of the bottle was not fully to America's liking. Indeed, the U.S. strategy in Iraq had tried to sidestep the history that America itself had given birth to. There had been the disastrous regency of Paul Bremer. It had been followed by the attempt to create a national security state under Ayad Allawi. Then there had come the strategy of the American envoy, Zalmay Khalilzad, that aimed to bring the Sunni leadership into the political process and wean them away from the terror and the insurgency.

Mr. Khalilzad had become, in his own sense of himself, something of a High Commissioner in Iraq, and his strategy had ended in failure; the Sunni leaders never broke with the insurgency. Their sobriety of late has been a function of the defeat their cause has suffered on the ground; all the inducements had not worked.

We are now in a new, and fourth, phase of this American presence. We should not try to "cheat" in the region, conceal what we had done, or apologize for it, by floating an Arab-Israeli peace process to the liking of the "Sunni street."

The Arabs have an unerring feel for the ways of strangers who venture into their lands. Deep down, the Sunni Arabs know what the fight for Baghdad is all about--oil wealth and power, the balance between the Sunni edifice of material and moral power and the claims of the Shia stepchildren. To this fight, Iran is a newcomer, an outlier. This is an old Arab account, the fight between the order of merchants and rulers and establishment jurists on the one side, and the righteous (Shia) oppositionists on the other. How apt it is that the struggle that had been fought on the plains of Karbala in southern Iraq so long ago has now returned, full circle, to Iraq.

For our part, we can't give full credence to the Sunni representations of things. We can cushion the Sunni defeat but can't reverse it. Our soldiers have not waged wars in Afghanistan and Iraq against Sunni extremists to fall for the fear of some imagined "Shia crescent" peddled by Sunni rulers and preachers. To that atavistic fight between Sunni and Shia, we ought to remain decent and discerning arbiters. To be sure, in Iraq itself we can't give a blank check to Shia maximalism. On its own, mainstream Shi'ism is eager to rein in its own diehards and self-anointed avengers.

There is a growing Shia unease with the Mahdi Army--and with the venality and incompetence of the Sadrists represented in the cabinet--and an increasing faith that the government and its instruments of order are the surer bet. The crackdown on the Mahdi Army that the new American commander, Gen. David Petraeus, has launched has the backing of the ruling Shia coalition. Iraqi police and army units have taken to the field against elements of the Mahdi army. In recent days, in the southern city of Diwaniyya, American and Iraqi forces have together battled the forces of Moqtada al-Sadr. To the extent that the Shia now see Iraq as their own country, their tolerance for mayhem and chaos has receded. Sadr may damn the American occupiers, but ordinary Shia men and women know that the liberty that came their way had been a gift of the Americans.

The young men of little education--earnest displaced villagers with the ways of the countryside showing through their features and dialect and shiny suits--who guarded me through Baghdad, spoke of old terrors, and of the joy and dignity of this new order. Children and nephews and younger brothers of men lost to the terror of the Baath, they are done with the old servitude. They behold the Americans keeping the peace of their troubled land with undisguised gratitude. It hasn't been always brilliant, this campaign waged in Iraq. But its mistakes can never smother its honor, and no apology for it is due the Arab autocrats who had averted their gaze from Iraq's long night of terror under the Baath.

---

One can never reconcile the beneficiaries of illegitimate, abnormal power to the end of their dominion. But this current re-alignment in Iraq carries with it a gift for the possible redemption of modern Islam among the Arabs. Hitherto Sunni Islam had taken its hegemony for granted and extremist strands within it have shown a refusal to accept "the other." Conversely, Shia history has been distorted by weakness and exclusion and by a concomitant abdication of responsibility.

A Shia-led state in Baghdad--with a strong Kurdish presence in it and a big niche for the Sunnis--can go a long way toward changing the region's terrible habits and expectations of authority and command. The Sunnis would still be hegemonic in the Arab councils of power beyond Iraq, but their monopoly would yield to the pluralism and complexity of that region.

"Watch your adjectives" is the admonition given American officers by Gen. Petraeus. In Baghdad, Americans and Iraqis alike know that this big endeavor has entered its final, decisive phase. Iraq has surprised and disappointed us before, but as they and we watch our adjectives there can be discerned the shape of a new country, a rough balance of forces commensurate with the demography of the place and with the outcome of a war that its erstwhile Sunni rulers had launched and lost. We made this history and should now make our peace with it.

Mr. Ajami, a 2006 recipient of the Bradley Prize, teaches at Johns Hopkins and is author of "The Foreigner's Gift: The Americans, the Arabs, and the Iraqis in Iraq" (Free Press, 2006).

[Used with permission from OpinionJournal.com, a web site from Dow Jones & Company, Inc.]

The surge: first fruits

Charles Krauthammer has an excellent, well-documented, summation of the initial results of the surge -- which is not completely staffed up yet. He also addresses the dishonorable efforts of Congressional Democrats attempting to undermine the success of the war in Iraq. [Emphasis is mine.]

How at this point -- with only about half of the additional surge troops yet deployed -- can Democrats be trying to force the United States to give up? The Democrats say they are carrying out their electoral mandate from the November election. But winning a single-vote Senate majority as a result of razor-thin victories in Montana and Virginia is hardly a landslide.

Second, if the electorate was sending an unconflicted message about withdrawal, how did the most uncompromising supporter of the war, Sen. Joe Lieberman, win handily in one of the most liberal states in the country?

And third, where was the mandate for withdrawal? Almost no Democratic candidates campaigned on that. They campaigned for changing the course the administration was on last November.

Which the president has done. He changed the civilian leadership at the Defense Department, replaced the head of Central Command and, most critically, replaced the Iraq commander with Petraeus -- unanimously approved by the Democratic Senate -- to implement a new counterinsurgency strategy.

How, indeed.

Recommended.

Iran in Iraq

StrategyPage has posted a good report about some of the influences and motivations behind the terrorism in Iraq. As you would expect, Iran is discussed:

Moreover, it's not just the Sunni Arab neighborhoods that need attention. Radical Shia outfits, like the Iran backed Mahdi Army, have also become more aggressive. The pro-Iranian groups have been losing strength, mainly because Arabs don't trust the Iranians. Despite sharing religious beliefs (most Iranians, like most Iraqi Arabs, are Shia), Iraqi Arabs know that the Iranians despise them, and are still unhappy with the results of the 1980s war. In that conflict, Iraqi Shia Arabs fought for Saddam against Iranians, and fought the Iranians to a standstill, and a ceasefire. This was a humiliation for the Iranians, who had walked over the local opposition for thousands of years. But the Iranians have money, weapons and technical assistance for Iraqi Shia Arabs willing to cooperate. All the Iranians want is more chaos inside Iraq. This makes Iraq weak, and less of a threat to Iranian ambitions in the region. While some of the pro-Iranian Iraqi Arabs believe they have a chance of turning Iraq into a religious dictatorship (like Iran is), most know they are being played, and paid. You take the money. Jobs are scarce. But Iran is still the enemy. Always has been, always will be.

There's a lot more . . .

Recommended.

The real 'civil war' in Iraq

A father and his son, who both have separately been to Anbar province recently, provide unique insight into what they see as the real civil war in Iraq -- Sunni tribes versus Al Qaeda Iraq.

In late 2005, acceptably-trained Iraqi battalions began to join the persistent Americans in Anbar. AQI resorted to suicide attacks and roadside bombs, and avoided direct fights. Sub-tribes began to kill AQI members in retaliation for individual crimes, and discovered that AQI was ruthless, but not tough. Near the Syrian border, an entire tribe joined forces with the Marines and drove AQI from the city of al Qaim.

By the fall of 2006 AQI had become the oppressor, careless in its destructive swath, while the American and Iraqi forces persisted with their mix of force of arms and civil engagement. When an AQI suicide car bomb attacked an Anbar market in November, killing a Marine and nine civilians, the Marine battalion commander and his Iraqi counterpart offered medical care at the local clinic for the entire town, including the first gynecological examinations many local women had seen. This was not an isolated event, and the people noticed.

With a war-weary population buoying them, 25 of the 31 Anbar sub-tribes have pledged to fight the insurgents over the past five months, sending thousands of tribesmen into the police and army. Led by Sheik Abu Sittar, who has called this an "awakening," the tribes believed they were joining the winners.

Read the whole thing for an honest look at the situation in Anbar.

Casualties in Iraq -- with less spin

Back Talk provides an analysis of recent casualty figures from Iraq. He also points out some misconceptions:

Americans don't realize that we are in a fight with al Qaeda and their affiliated jihadists in Iraq. And they don't know because the media equates attacks by al Qaeda with the phrase "sectarian violence." Look at this MSNBC headline again:

Tal Afar bomb toll hits 152, deadliest of Iraq war

Tally arrives during week in which more than 500 died in sectarian violence

Wrong. More than 400 of those deaths were caused by al Qaeda, not because they are Sunnis who hate Shiites but because they want Shiites to start killing Sunnis. It is wrong to call that "sectarian violence," and doing so just reinforces the obsolete schema that governs the thinking of Democratic leaders and mainstream media reporters, all of whom are sure they see a civil war spontaneously erupting before their very eyes. What they are seeing instead is al Qaeda fighting against Iraq and, more to the point, against America. We either stay in Iraq and defeat them, or we leave on a timetable and lose to them. That's your choice, take your pick. There are no other choices.

Recommended.

Then . . . and now

Stephen, over at Horsefeathers, dug up an Arthur Chrenkov archive containing excerpts from an interview of the last surviving military leader of the uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto in 1943, Marek Edelman. Mr. Edelman talks about fascism in 1943 and about Islamic fascism in the 21st Century.

Interviewer: Not a day seems to go by in Iraq without a terrorist attack, and in the last few days two Polish soldiers and a Polish journalist have died.

Edelman: And do you know any war where nobody dies? I don't. Alas, it's in man's make-up; there's a fatal flaw there that makes him kill, for pleasure or over some silly beliefs.

Interviewer: So this war is one over some silly beliefs?

Edelman: Now, now. Who started killing people? Americans didn't invade a wonderful democratic Iraq. There was a dictatorship there, torture, terror.

Interviewer: But there are people who say it's not our business.

Edelman: And whose business is it? Every war with fascism is our business. In 1939 there were also many people who said that the war in Poland was not their war, and what happened? Great nations fell because politicians listened to those who were saying that it's not worth dying for Gdansk [Danzig]. If only we'd intervened militarily after Hitler re-entered Rhineland we probably would not have had the war and the Holocaust.

Interviewer: Many people do understand that, but they don't understand why the Americans have to go to the other side of the world and fight over Iraq now.

Edelman: And why did they go to Europe then? Who defeated Hitler and saved Europe from fascism? The French? No, the Americans did. We thanked them then because they saved us. Today we criticise them because they're saving somebody else.

Go read the whole thing. It provides a reality-based perspective on what's going on in the world today.

Here is another worthwhile link that takes you to an account by Marek Edelman of the Jewish uprising in the Warsaw ghetto in 1943.

More WMD in Iraq

Bill Roggio reports on another chlorine gas attack by terrorists in the Anbar province.

This is the sixth successful chlorine gas suicide attack in Anbar province this year. Two other trucks laden with explosives and chlorine gas were seized in Ramadi, one just last evening. It is possible last evening's captured chlorine bomb was to be used in a coordinated attack, as al Qaeda conducted a near simultaneous chlorine attack in Ramadi, Fallujah and Amiriya on March 17.

Does Michael Moore still consider these barbaric murderers "freedom fighters"?

Good sense

Mohammed, at Iraq the Model, has a good post up about why we should stay fully engaged in Iraq. [Emphasis added.]

Al-Qaeda itself boasts about the great "sacrifices" of more than 4,000 "martyrs" to emphasize the importance of the war here. And the hundreds of suicide bombers preferred to blow themselves up in Iraq than anywhere else should remind us that if al-Qaeda considers this the main war then why talk about redeployment?

Walking away from the main war is not redeployment, it's quitting.

Exactly.

Read the whole thing.

How to win or lose in Iraq

Historian Arthur Herman has an insighful essay about how to win or lose in Iraq. Here is a part of his opening section:

In short, if the battle for the hearts and minds of Iraqis still continues and is showing signs of improvement, the battle for the hearts and minds of Congress, or at least of the Democratic majority, seems to be all but over. In the meantime, still more adamant on the subject are many of our best-known pundits and media commentators. According to Thomas Friedman of the New York Times, who speaks for many, Iraq “is so broken it can’t even have a proper civil war,” and America is therefore now left with but a single option: “how we might disengage with the least damage possible.” To the left of Friedman and his ilk are the strident and often openly anti-American voices of organizations like moveon.org.

It is indeed striking that war critics like Senators Harry Reid and Joseph Biden, who in 2005 were calling on the Pentagon to mount a proper counterinsurgency campaign in Iraq, and to send enough troops to make it happen, should now be seeking ways to revoke legislative authority for that very operation. Exactly why they should have changed their minds on the issue is not obvious, although they and their colleagues do claim to be expressing not only their own judgment but the opinions and sentiments of the American people at large. If recent polls are to be trusted, however, these politicians may well turn out be wrong about popular sentiment.² And if past history and our current experience in Iraq are any guide, they are certainly wrong about the war on the ground.

In fact, the historical record is clear. The roots of failure in fighting insurgencies like the one in Iraq are not military. To the contrary, Western militaries have shown remarkable skill in learning and relearning the crucial lessons of how to prevail against unconventional foes, and tremendous bravery in fighting difficult and unfamiliar battles. If Iraq fails, the cause will have to be sought elsewhere.

Go read the whole thing.

Our destiny

Gerard van der Leun has a compelling essay posted about American resolve four years in to the Long War. Here's how he begins:

Four years in. An inch of time. Four years in and the foolish and credulous among us yearn to get out. Their feelings require it. The power of their Holy Gospel of "Imagine" compels them. Their overflowing pools of compassion for the enslavers of women, the killers of homosexuals, the beheaders of reporters, and the incinerators of men and women working quietly at their desks, rise and flood their minds until their eyes flow with crocodile tears while their mouths emit slogans made of cardboard. They believe the world is run on wishes and that they will always have three more.

I highly recommend you read the whole thing.

Clash of civilizations

Early 'surge' results are heartening

Robert Kagan reports at washingtonpost.com that the 'surge' appears to be succeeding. Here's how he begins:

A front-page story in The Post last week suggested that the Bush administration has no backup plan in case the surge in Iraq doesn't work. I wonder if The Post and other newspapers have a backup plan in case it does.

Leading journalists have been reporting for some time that the war was hopeless, a fiasco that could not be salvaged by more troops and a new counterinsurgency strategy. The conventional wisdom in December held that sending more troops was politically impossible after the antiwar tenor of the midterm elections. It was practically impossible because the extra troops didn't exist. Even if the troops did exist, they could not make a difference.

Four months later, the once insurmountable political opposition has been surmounted. The nonexistent troops are flowing into Iraq. And though it is still early and horrible acts of violence continue, there is substantial evidence that the new counterinsurgency strategy, backed by the infusion of new forces, is having a significant effect.

Some observers are reporting the shift. Iraqi bloggers Mohammed and Omar Fadhil, widely respected for their straight talk, say that "early signs are encouraging." The first impact of the "surge," they write, was psychological. Both friends and foes in Iraq had been convinced, in no small part by the American media, that the United States was preparing to pull out. When the opposite occurred, this alone shifted the dynamic.

The heartening part of this is the feedback from the Iraqis themselves:

. . . Now, the plan to secure Baghdad "is becoming stricter and gaining momentum by the day as more troops pour into the city, allowing for a better implementation of the 'clear and hold' strategy." Baghdadis "always want the 'hold' part to materialize, and feel safe when they go out and find the Army and police maintaining their posts -- the bad guys can't intimidate as long as the troops are staying."

A greater sense of confidence produces many benefits. The number of security tips about insurgents that Iraqi civilians provide has jumped sharply. Stores and marketplaces are reopening in Baghdad, increasing the sense of community. People dislocated by sectarian violence are returning to their homes. As a result, "many Baghdadis feel hopeful again about the future, and the fear of civil war is slowly being replaced by optimism that peace might one day return to this city," the Fadhils report. "This change in mood is something huge by itself."

Based on this, and other reports, I am beginning to feel as if we are turning this around -- provided the Dems don't do something stupid.

Go read the rest . . .

Across Iraq

Michael Yon has been embedded with CSM Mellinger, the most senior NCO in the Army. He recently returned from a 1200 mile trek across Iraq. He writes about morale, among other things, in his first dispatch about his road trip through Iraq.

There’s a lot of talk back at home that morale among American forces is low here. While writing this, I called Rich Oppel from the New York Times, who is in Baghdad, to ask him how morale looked from his vantage. Rich said that a lot of the soldiers are not happy with the extensions of their tours, something I have heard soldiers complain about also. However, I watch morale very closely. More closely than all else. Low morale in a particular unit can be the result of poor leadership in that unit, or just not getting mail, for instance. But gauging morale is not a simple affair of asking a few soldiers. A person has to live with them across Iraq. Having done so, my opinion is that overall troop morale is good to high. (If their morale could be bottled, it would probably would sell like crack, then be outlawed.)

Recommended reading.

All's quieter on the Iraqi front

Despite the fact that the mainstream media can only report body counts (though even the counts are lessening), there is much more to see in terms of results of the currently successful "surge" strategy in Iraq.

Brothers Mohammed and Omar Fadhil, who are residents of Baghdad, report on OpinionJournal about the way things are changing as a direct result of the joint American/Iraqi military operation.

I've reprinted the article, in its entirety, in the extended entry.

Read on . . .

Notes From Baghdad
Open liquor stores and other signs of the surge's success.

BY MOHAMMED FADHIL AND OMAR FADHIL
Wednesday, March 7, 2007 12:01 a.m. EST

BAGHDAD--The new strategy to secure Baghdad has been dubbed by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki as "Operation Imposing the Law." After weeks of waiting and anxiety it is finally under way, and early signs are encouraging.

The government information campaign and the news about thousands of additional troops coming had a positive impact even before the operation started. Commanders and lieutenants of various militant groups abandoned their positions in Baghdad and in some cases fled the country. Diyala province, to the east of Baghdad, was the destination for many Sunni extremists, while Shiite militiamen went to Babil and Diwaniya in the south. Some higher-ranking members of Shiite and Sunni militant groups fled to Iran and Syria respectively. This migration motivated the government to announce supporting security measures in five provinces around Baghdad, to make sure that fleeing bad guys do not regroup in other cities.

This indicates that both the addition of more troops and the tough words of Prime Minister Maliki are doing the job of intimidating the militants. The extremists understand only the language of power, and any reluctance or softness on the part of the Iraqi or U.S. government would only embolden them. In this way the clearly voiced commitment of President Bush and Prime Minister Maliki was exactly the type of strong message that needed to be sent.

---

One difference between this and earlier--failed--attempts to secure Baghdad is the willingness of the Iraqi and U.S. governments to commit enough resources for enough time to make it work. Another important point is the insistence of the Iraqi government that political factions not interfere with the progress of military action. The commanders and the prime minister have made it clear that no one will be above the law, and that even places of worship and the offices of politicians will be subject to searches and raids if evidence of involvement in violence is found.

The Iraqi commanders are also trying to give the operation a national stamp by including troops from across the country--even from Kurdistan and far provinces like Basra, where politicians and officers have been long opposed to being involved in Baghdad. Yet another aspect that makes "Imposing Law" unique is its ascending intensity. Unlike other operations that always started from a peak and soon lost momentum, this plan is becoming stricter and gaining momentum by the day as more troops pour into the city, allowing for a better implementation of the "clear and hold" strategy. People here always want the "hold" part to materialize, and feel safe when they go out and find the Army and police maintaining their posts--the bad guys can't intimidate as long as the troops are staying.

The Iraqi people themselves are playing their role in the plan. Recent figures from U.S. officers in Baghdad show that the joint forces have been receiving an average of 250 security tips from civilians since the beginning of the operation, about twice previous figures. With help from a government-appointed committee, people in some Baghdad neighborhoods are returning occupied mosques to their original keepers and worshippers, and holding joint prayers between the two sects in mixed neighborhoods.

So after only a couple weeks we can feel, despite the continuing violence, that much has been accomplished. Many Baghdadis feel hopeful again about the future, and the fear of civil war is slowly being replaced by optimism that peace might one day return to this city. This change in mood is something huge by itself.

---

The brightest image of the past two weeks was the scene of displaced families returning home; more than a thousand families are back to their homes under the protection of the Army and police. This figure invites hope that Baghdad will restore its social, ethnic and religious mosaic.

Marketplaces are seeing more activity and stores that were long shuttered are reopening--including even some liquor stores that came under vicious attacks in the past. This is a sign that extremists no longer can intimidate people and hold the city hostage. All of this gives the sense that law is being imposed.

Checkpoints are not seen as scary threats to the innocent. They look more professional and impartial as they include members of the police, army, multinational forces and even traffic cops with laptops verifying registration papers. We've lost the fear that checkpoints might be traps set by death squads; they search everyone, even official convoys and ambulances.

We feel safer about moving in the city now, and politicians who used to hide behind the walls of the Green Zone are venturing out. Watching Mr. Maliki walking on Palestine Street in central Baghdad gave a positive impression that the state, and not the gangs, owns the streets.

---

It is true that not all of Baghdad has seen the same amount of progress, but we realize that patience is necessary. People do not complain about delays at checkpoints but instead say they'd like to see stricter inspection.

Military-wise, the results are not humble either; hundreds of militants have been killed, more hundreds arrested, and dozens of weapons caches discovered and destroyed. The frequency of attacks has declined drastically, and the terrifying scene of bullet-riddled bodies has become a rarer incident.

Our people want to see this effort succeed. We know it's not going to be an easy fight. Rescuing all of Baghdad's districts from the grip of militants and terrorists will require sacrifice and hard work. We hope the troops and the governments in Baghdad and America do not lose their resolve.

Mohammed and Omar Fadhil write a blog, IraqTheModel.com, from Baghdad.

[Used with permission from OpinionJournal.com, a web site from Dow Jones & Company, Inc.]

Progress in Iraq

IraqPundit has a relative in Baghdad who he keeps in close contact with. He notes her positive comments on how things have been going there as a result of the new strategy in Iraq.

I spoke to an aunt in Baghdad the other day. She and her husband live in a mixed area that locals call "The Judges' Neighborhood." They and their neighbors have seen a lot of terrible violence, and have experienced far more than their share of fear.

I've talked with this aunt frequently, and while she's always tried to sound as if she and her husband will be just fine, this recent call was different. This time, she had palpable optimism in her voice. For the first time in a long, long time, she told me, she and the people around her feel that things might turn out okay after all.

Soldiers have been going door to door, she said, trying to locate those who had been chased away from their homes, to help them return. People are coming back to the neighborhood; daily life on the streets in her quarter is beginning to assume an air of routine. Her friends and neighbors are increasingly hopeful that things are taking a meaningful turn for the better. For them at least, the latest security crackdown is showing signs of success.

Are my aunt and her neighbors kidding themselves out of desperation? That's possible; it's hard to live without hope, and people can be creative at manufacturing reasons to be optimistic. (Though the truth is that Iraqis are not, as a rule, an optimistic group, and are inclined by cultural habit to see things darkly. But that's another story.) It's true that the murderers in Iraq are still at work. On the other hand, I'm far more inclined to take seriously a picture of Baghdad that comes from a life-long Baghdadi than one coming from a Westerner who has parachuted into town for a while, and who doesn't speak the language.

We seem to be on the right track over there. This is going to take time, though, and we Americans need to be patient.

Go read the whole thing.

The domestic American 'whys' and 'hows' of Iraq

Victor Davis Hansen discusses American involvement in Iraq.

Apparently, after the announcement of “Mission Accomplished,” and leading up to the 2004 elections, no one wanted CNN broadcasting live footage from a new siege of Hue in Fallujah. In the process, public support for the war was insidiously and slowly lost, by an Abu Ghraib or a grotesque televised beheading unanswered by a tough American retaliation against the militias. The terrorists learned from our own domestic calculus that each month of televised IEDs was worth one or two U.S. senators suddenly dropping their support for the war.

He covers a lot of territory in a relatively short column. I recommend it.

A Senator with good sense and a backbone

Senator John Kyl actually went to Baghdad and toured the area to try to make his own assessment of the situation. And he said some unpopular things:

U.S. Sen. Jon Kyl said Sunday he's certain that Iran is helping militants stir up violence in Iraq after he toured the region this weekend.

"Everyone here believes the Iranians are involved right up to their eyes," said Kyl, who led a group of congressional members including U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., through Kuwait and Baghdad.

He spoke to The Associated Press in a telephone interview from Israel.

[snip]

He said the House of Representatives' nonbinding resolution to reject a 21,500-troop buildup in Iraq bothered some of the soldiers he spoke with.

"It is impossible for the troops not to read about what's going on back in the United States," he said. "It does bother them. Because they see all of the good that's being accomplished here. They're confident in their mission."

[snip]

Nevertheless, Kyl remained committed to supporting an escalation of American troops in the country. He said the added units will give Iraqis hope that the government can clear and hold neighborhoods that had been torn apart by fighting.

"Everybody says that you can feel it when you walk on the streets," Kyl said. "The mood is different. Things are definitely going to change for the better."

At least there are some U.S. Senators with real backbone!

Cusp

Bill Roggio reports on a significant defection from the ranks of Al-Queda in Iraq.

Al-Jabouri's turnaround is stunning, since just last December he was broadcasting al-Qaeda propaganda videos on al-Zawraa. In a response to my article al-Zawraa: Muj TV, al-Jabouri openly admitted to having contacts with the terrorist group to receive their propaganda. Several U.S. military and intelligence officials believe al-Jabouri himself is as close to al-Qaeda as it gets (an accusation al-Jabouri denies). He and his network are based out of Syria, the hub of the Islamist jihadis.

Could this signal a turning point in Iraq?

Read the whole thing.

Shameful invertebrates

Ralph Peters expresses outrage at the treasonous cowards in Congress who voted for the resolution against our troops.

Providing aid and comfort to the enemy in wartime is treason. It's not "just politics." It's treason.

And signaling our enemies that Congress wants them to win isn't "supporting our troops."

The "nonbinding resolution" telling the world that we intend to surrender to terrorism and abandon Iraq may be the most disgraceful congressional action since the Democratic Party united to defend slavery.

The vote was a huge morale booster for al Qaeda, for Iraq's Sunni insurgents, and for the worst of the Shia militias.

The message Congress just sent to them all was, "Hold on, we'll stop the surge, we're going to leave - and you can slaughter the innocent with our blessing."

We've reached a low point in the history of our government when a substantial number of legislators would welcome an American defeat in Iraq for domestic political advantage.

Amen.

B1 over Baghdad

Omar Fadhil provides a look at a B-1 bomber over Baghdad and, more importantly, an assessment of what's happening during the surge in Baghdad.

Back in Baghdad the most significant raid conducted yesterday was the one on Buratha mosque, one of the most important Shia mosques in Baghdad which is also considered a SCIRI territory.

The raid ended without blood but the preacher of the mosque, a lawmaker from the SCIRI, expressed his dismay about the raid “because it was American soldiers who searched the mosque” and this seems to be one of the changes in rules of engagement. I recall that there was some kind of a rule that said only Iraqi soldiers or police were allowed to walk into places of worship while American troops would have to stay outside.

This raid too is of political significance as it can be used to prove to that the operation is impartial and not directed against one sect without the other.

On the streets, checkpoints and roadblocks are becoming increasingly serious and strict in doing their job; soldiers and policemen are sparing no vehicles or convoys from searching and I personally saw a case yesterday where an ambulance driver tried to rush his vehicle through a checkpoint but the soldiers ordered him to stop and let him pass only after they checked the inside of the vehicle and found only a civilian medical emergency.

Strict checkpoints always mean slow traffic and inconvenient delays for Baghdadis but this downside is welcome when these security measures make the streets safer.

Despite the traffic jams and though this is the largest deployment for troops in the capital, daily life and civilian activity-contrary to what was expected-still continues at a rather normal level, unlike previous crackdowns where life came to near paralysis.

Go read it all.

Iraqi troops

Bill Ardolino reports about accompanying the Iraqi Army on night ops.

It was after midnight when our convoy of Jundi (Iraqi Army soldiers) and trailing Marine advisors rolled out into Fallujah's neighborhoods, their darkened Humvees barreling down pitch black streets and muddy back alleys. Additional marines from Charlie Company added a security element along with several Abrams tanks, ghostly juggernauts which would periodically materialize out of the darkness, their poised turrets and night optics scanning jumbled city streets.

The mission was a "cordon and knock:" Iraqi Army, the Iraqi Police Special Missions Group and U.S. Marines were to raid residences and snatch up and question suspected insurgents in the middle of the night.

There are quite a few pictures, as well. Go read the whole thing.

Good news from Iraq

Bill Crawford has posted another report about the many good things happening in Iraq. The article is quite long (almost 10 printed pages), but provides a good detailed look. Here's an excerpt:

Mosul and al Qaim are other areas where significant progress has been made over the past year. In Mosul, Iraqi police and army forces have brought law and order to a historically violent area:

“Yes, there is violence in this city. But, there is violence in American cities that have nearly two million people in their population as well,” said [Maj. Gen. Benjamin R.] Mixon.

Recognizing the similar levels of violence in a comparable city in America, Twitty paints an optimistic picture of the current state of Mosul and Ninewa Province.

“Amidst the turmoil and issues that persist in Iraq, there is a semblance of peace and normalcy in the north. Ninewa’s leadership works hard to provide its citizens security, build its economy, and implement programs that will continue to keep sectarian violence from the province,” said Twitty. “One thing we cannot do is attempt to put an American standard on any Iraqi city,” said Twitty. “We have to remember that this country lived under a dictator for more than 30 years. The major and significant difference between U.S. cities and Mosul is the use of improvised explosive devices, rocket-propelled grenades, and other military - grade weapons. Anti-Iraqi forces persist in their attacks, but the Iraqi security forces, consisting of the Iraqi Army, border patrol and police, continue to quell those attacks daily,” Twitty continued.

Al Qaim was frequently called the “Wild West,” but the Marines cleaned the area up in 2005, and the situation is improving daily:

Two years ago, the same streets were fraught with roadside bombs and snipers, and sellers and buyers stayed away. The area was considered too dangerous even for a quick tour by a U.S. general in his armored Humvee.

The Al Qaim region routinely was described as an out-of-control "wild west" where the Marines were fighting, with only limited success, to control the smuggling of insurgent fighters and weapons from Syria.

Today, Marines walk the downtown beat, chatting with residents, fielding their complaints, encouraging them to contact the Iraqi police if they suspect insurgent activity.

In a country studded with areas where the United States either has failed or had only limited progress toward stabilization, Husaybah and the surrounding Al Qaim region stand out as a success, officials said.

Unfortunately, the American people aren’t hearing about this, as Army medic Corporal Ignacio Garza observes:

Based on his experiences in Iraq, events there are not as bad as the news media make it seem, an Army medic from Adrian said.

Cpl. Ignacio Garza, a medic in the 1st Armored Division home on leave after serving in Iraq for six months, said the troops don’t watch television news for war updates because they think none of the networks show an accurate depiction of what’s happening. He said they ignore large parts of the country, including the Kurd-dominated north, that are stable.

Clearly, progress is being made over there, as Mr. Crawford's extensively sourced article shows us. Too bad our media does not care to disseminate that information.

Recommended reading.

Dismounted Patrol: Khadimiya

Michelle Malkin has posted a video report taken when she accompanied a U.S. Army patrol in Khadimiya, IRAQ.

The video is about 10 minutes long, but it's well worth watching.

Iraq for dummies

Bridget Johnson, over at NRO provides us with a quick reference guide about Iraq.

Shouldn’t there be some sort of “Iraq for Dummies” guide that easily shoots down the nonsensical claims pushed by the antiwar left and swallowed by the gullible middle?

Now there is! If you’re tired of wasting your breath countering these familiar refrains over and over, just hand the vociferous war opponent a copy of my rant. Better yet, just paper the windshields of hybrid cars with this run-through at your next local Code Pink rally.

Despite the snarky comments, she makes some good points. Recommended.

Beirut

Michael Totten has a post up about the Hezbollah "capital", Haret Hreik in the aftermath of the battle with Israel last summer.

Our first stop was only a few streets from his house. Whole blocks of towers were missing.

“Did you stay here during the war?” I said and shuddered at the thought of hunkering down while whole towers exploded just down the street.

“No,” he said like I was crazy for asking. “No one could stay here. Everyone had to leave.”

The Israeli Air Force dropped leaflets over the neighborhood warning residents to get out of the way of the incoming air strikes. Many times more people would have been killed if they hadn’t done this.

His post is interspersed with many photos, as well.

Recommended.

Disturbing poll results

Dean Barnett, over at Townhall makes some remarks about the results from a Fox News poll that were released on Thursday. He finds it very depressing.

In the latest Fox News poll, just out today, the pollsters asked the following question:

Do you personally want the Iraq plan President Bush announced last week to succeed?

Here are the results:

Overall: 63% Yes 22% No 15% Don’t Know

Democrats: 51% Yes 34% No 15% Don’t Know

Republicans: 79% Yes 11% No 10% Don’t Know

Independents 63% Yes 19% No 17% Don’t Know

Friends, I’ll allow you a minute to wrap your minds around this, for we are truly through the looking [g]lass. Even though we have some 150,000 troops in harm’s way and we universally profess to “support the troops,” over 1/3 of our society either wants them to fail or doesn’t know if they want them to succeed. Even more chilling are the results regarding our currently dominant political party. 49% of Democrats either want us to lose in Iraq or “don’t know” if they want us to succeed.

I would love to hear why losing in Iraq would be in the national interest. And I would love to hear the humanitarian justification for leaving Baghdad’s civilians to the tender mercies of the murderous militias and terrorists that stalk that city.

And I would also love to hear Democratic leaders respond to these poll numbers. But I won’t hold my breath.

I'm hoping it's because people who responded to the poll weren't paying attention to what was actually asked . . .

Words from the grave

2LT Mark Daily died in Iraq while doing his duty. He left behind friends and family, and an inspirational post on his MySpace page.

Here's a link to the post.

Here's an excerpt:

So that is why I joined. In the time it took for you to read this explanation, innocent people your age have suffered under the crushing misery of tyranny. Every tool of philosophical advancement and communication that we use to develop our opinions about this war are denied to countless human beings on this planet, many of whom live under the regimes that have, in my opinion, been legitimately targeted for destruction. Some have allowed their resentment of the President to stir silent applause for setbacks in Iraq. Others have ironically decried the war because it has tied up our forces and prevented them from confronting criminal regimes in Sudan, Uganda, and elsewhere.

I simply decided that the time for candid discussions of the oppressed was over, and I joined.

The entire post is reprinted below the fold.

[Via Michelle Malkin.]

Sunday, October 29, 2006

Why I Joined:

Current mood: optimistic

Why I Joined:

This question has been asked of me so many times in so many different contexts that I thought it would be best if I wrote my reasons for joining the Army on my page for all to see. First, the more accurate question is why I volunteered to go to Iraq. After all, I joined the Army a week after we declared war on Saddam's government with the intention of going to Iraq. Now, after years of training and preparation, I am finally here.

Much has changed in the last three years. The criminal Ba'ath regime has been replaced by an insurgency fueled by Iraq's neighbors who hope to partition Iraq for their own ends. This is coupled with the ever present transnational militant Islamist movement which has seized upon Iraq as the greatest way to kill Americans, along with anyone else they happen to be standing near. What was once a paralyzed state of fear is now the staging ground for one of the largest transformations of power and ideology the Middle East has experienced since the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. Thanks to Iran, Syria, and other enlightened local actors, this transformation will be plagued by interregional hatred and genocide. And I am now in the center of this.

Is this why I joined?

Yes. Much has been said about America's intentions in overthrowing Saddam Hussein and seeking to establish a new state based upon political representation and individual rights. Many have framed the paradigm through which they view the conflict around one-word explanations such as "oil" or "terrorism," favoring the one which best serves their political persuasion. I did the same thing, and anyone who knew me before I joined knows that I am quite aware and at times sympathetic to the arguments against the war in Iraq. If you think the only way a person could bring themselves to volunteer for this war is through sheer desperation or blind obedience then consider me the exception (though there are countless like me).

I joined the fight because it occurred to me that many modern day "humanists" who claim to possess a genuine concern for human beings throughout the world are in fact quite content to allow their fellow "global citizens" to suffer under the most hideous state apparatuses and conditions. Their excuses used to be my excuses. When asked why we shouldn't confront the Ba'ath party, the Taliban or the various other tyrannies throughout this world, my answers would allude to vague notions of cultural tolerance (forcing women to wear a veil and stay indoors is such a quaint cultural tradition), the sanctity of national sovereignty (how eager we internationalists are to throw up borders to defend dictatorships!) or even a creeping suspicion of America's intentions. When all else failed, I would retreat to my fragile moral ecosystem that years of living in peace and liberty had provided me. I would write off war because civilian casualties were guaranteed, or temporary alliances with illiberal forces would be made, or tank fuel was toxic for the environment. My fellow "humanists" and I would relish contently in our self righteous declaration of opposition against all military campaigns against dictatorships, congratulating one another for refusing to taint that aforementioned fragile moral ecosystem that many still cradle with all the revolutionary tenacity of the members of Rage Against the Machine and Greenday. Others would point to America's historical support of Saddam Hussein, sighting it as hypocritical that we would now vilify him as a thug and a tyrant. Upon explaining that we did so to ward off the fiercely Islamist Iran, which was correctly identified as the greater threat at the time, eyes are rolled and hypocrisy is declared. Forgetting that America sided with Stalin to defeat Hitler, who was promptly confronted once the Nazis were destroyed, America's initial engagement with Saddam and other regional actors is identified as the ultimate argument against America's moral crusade.

And maybe it is. Maybe the reality of politics makes all political action inherently crude and immoral. Or maybe it is these adventures in philosophical masturbation that prevent people from ever taking any kind of effective action against men like Saddam Hussein. One thing is for certain, as disagreeable or as confusing as my decision to enter the fray may be, consider what peace vigils against genocide have accomplished lately. Consider that there are 19 year old soldiers from the Midwest who have never touched a college campus or a protest who have done more to uphold the universal legitimacy of representative government and individual rights by placing themselves between Iraqi voting lines and homicidal religious fanatics. Often times it is less about how clean your actions are and more about how pure your intentions are.

So that is why I joined. In the time it took for you to read this explanation, innocent people your age have suffered under the crushing misery of tyranny. Every tool of philosophical advancement and communication that we use to develop our opinions about this war are denied to countless human beings on this planet, many of whom live under the regimes that have, in my opinion, been legitimately targeted for destruction. Some have allowed their resentment of the President to stir silent applause for setbacks in Iraq. Others have ironically decried the war because it has tied up our forces and prevented them from confronting criminal regimes in Sudan, Uganda, and elsewhere.

I simply decided that the time for candid discussions of the oppressed was over, and I joined.

In digesting this posting, please remember that America's commitment to overthrow Saddam Hussein and his sons existed before the current administration and would exist into our future children's lives had we not acted. Please remember that the problems that plague Iraq today were set in motion centuries ago and were up until now held back by the most cruel of cages. Don't forget that human beings have a responsibility to one another and that Americans will always have a responsibility to the oppressed. Don't overlook the obvious reasons to disagree with the war but don't cheapen the moral aspects either. Assisting a formerly oppressed population in converting their torn society into a plural, democratic one is dangerous and difficult business, especially when being attacked and sabotaged from literally every direction. So if you have anything to say to me at the end of this reading, let it at least include "Good Luck"

Mark Daily

I thank you, Mark, for your willingness to die for the rest of us. Your sacrifice is appreciated more than I can put into words. God rest your soul, and may His grace be with your friends and family.

Four days in Baghdad

Bryan Preston accompanied Michelle Malkin to Iraq for a few days early this month. He has put together a quick assessment of what is going on over there along with the prospects for success.

Before setting off on this post, I want to stress that I don’t think spending a few days in Baghdad has turned me into an expert on the war. I’ve followed the war like you have since it began and obviously following the conflict day to day informs what I think about things. But I’ve now been in Iraq and I’ve seen the war up close. So while I don’t claim to be an expert, I guess you could call me a quick study.

This post is mostly about mistakes. The troops didn’t sit down with us and tick off all the mistakes that they think we have made in Iraq to date, so what follows isn’t their gripe list being published under my name. They did answer our questions forthrightly and we learned much from interviewing them and just talking with them over chow and listening to their crosstalk in the Humvees. So this post is made up of my observations after seeing the war up close and following it from afar, including mistakes, fumbles and ways forward to win–and what victory actually looks like.

Go read the whole thing.

Iraqi reactions

Amir Taheri reports on some Iraqi reactions to President Bush's new strategy for success in Iraq.

'A SIGH of relief!"

So one resident of Haifa Street, in the heart of Baghdad's badlands, reacted to the new plan to secure the Iraqi capital with the help of thousands of additional American troops.

"Maybe the Americans aren't running away after all," said the resident, a Sunni Arab, over the phone moments after President Bush unveiled his new plan. "The message seems to be that the United States will remain committed as long as Bush is in the White House."

Apparently, our commitment to success in Iraq is very heartening to its citizenry.

Though this article came out a week ago, I think it is worth highlighting. It provides a nicely balanced view of Iraqi reactions, both positive and negative. Recommended reading.

Interview with a policeman

Bill Ardolino, currently embedded with the Marines in Fallujah, posts an interesting interview with an Iraqi policeman there. Here's how he begins:

The difficulty of obtaining this interview underscores the political and cultural complexities of the American effort in Fallujah. In order to get a few minutes of alone candor with an Iraqi patrolman, the Marines had to coordinate a task that excused his visit to the American wing of the station. Some Iraqi policeman - typically the ones who are in positions to work most closely with the Marines and civilian advisors - like the Americans, some tolerate the Americans, some dislike the Americans, and it's widely believed that a few actually (at least passively) work with insurgents. Paradoxically in most cases, the majority want Americans to leave, but not yet.

Go read the rest -- it's well worth your time.

[Via Instapundit.]

Not the same thing

Daniel Henninger has a good op-ed up about how the U.S. strategy for success in Iraq has, indeed, changed. Here's how he begins:

Immediately after the president's speech, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said, "I heard nothing new." Nothing? When Gen. David Petraeus takes command of U.S. forces in Iraq, it will mark the start of an historic turn in military strategy in Iraq and perhaps in U.S. war-fighting doctrine.

The U.S.'s primary problem in Iraq, manifest across 2006, has been an urban insurgency in a 30-mile radius around Baghdad and in Anbar province. The Petraeus command is the overdue beginning of the counterinsurgency.

This isn't a one-off effort as at Fallujah, but counterinsurgency as daily U.S. military policy. It is the product of an enormous amount of self-criticism and analysis done by military and civilian analysts in and out of government. It does not mean, as often suggested the past 24 hours, that 20,000 U.S. troops are now going to run out and look for gun battles with insurgents in back alleys.

I've reprinted the entire piece below the fold.

'Unity of Effort'
The Petraeus command is the overdue beginning of the counterinsurgency.

BY DANIEL HENNINGER
Friday, January 12, 2007 12:01 a.m. EST

Immediately after the president's speech, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said, "I heard nothing new." Nothing? When Gen. David Petraeus takes command of U.S. forces in Iraq, it will mark the start of an historic turn in military strategy in Iraq and perhaps in U.S. war-fighting doctrine.

The U.S.'s primary problem in Iraq, manifest across 2006, has been an urban insurgency in a 30-mile radius around Baghdad and in Anbar province. The Petraeus command is the overdue beginning of the counterinsurgency.

This isn't a one-off effort as at Fallujah, but counterinsurgency as daily U.S. military policy. It is the product of an enormous amount of self-criticism and analysis done by military and civilian analysts in and out of government. It does not mean, as often suggested the past 24 hours, that 20,000 U.S. troops are now going to run out and look for gun battles with insurgents in back alleys.

---

In broadest outline, the plan divides Baghdad into nine districts, essentially neighborhoods. The job of providing daily security in each district will be undertaken by an Iraqi army brigade of several thousand soldiers, a U.S. support battalion of up to 1,000 troops, and most importantly, about 20 U.S. military "embeds" or advisers.

Some of us predicted late last year that advisory embeds would be part of the new Bush strategy on reading National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley's November memo of advice to the president in the New York Times. After a late November trip to Iraq, Mr. Hadley said four times in the memo that the U.S. should embed coalition forces with Iraq's army and dysfunctional police.

The source of this idea, in part, was a successful Marine experiment in Anbar province. Rather than attach just a single U.S. military adviser to an Iraqi commander at the division level, the Marines put advisers alongside Iraqi units down to the NCO level. They stayed with and fought with their Iraqi counterparts 24/7. And the Marines reported that the Iraqis fought with more confidence and effect, a k a spine-stiffening.

In 2004, a similar but broader effort at integration between U.S. and Iraqi forces was planned in Anbar province by Marine Maj. Gen. James Mattis. The Mattis plan is summarized in the middle of the Army's new Counterinsurgency Manual, released just last month. The manual's drafting was overseen by Gen. David Petraeus, who will now direct the U.S. military effort in the neighborhoods of Baghdad. It's not a coincidence. The manual describes in detail the purpose, theory, tactics and problems (including spikes in violence and casualties) likely to emerge during the new counterinsurgency strategy.

At the end of the manual there is a bibliography of books, studies and articles on fighting insurgency. It includes classics, such as Alistair Horne's "A Savage War of Peace," but what's interesting is how many of them were published since 2003, amid the Iraq war. Out of this effort has emerged a "best practices" for the U.S. when fighting an insurgency, as now.

Whether the U.S. should have done this back when Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and his foreign suicide bombers emerged is a legitimate question. The point is this: The Iraq violence has not been running like an untended open hydrant. Some of our best and brightest have been thinking hard about how to shut the valve. Last month AEI released a plan reflecting similar counterinsurgency ideas by military specialist Fred Kagan and the Army's former vice chief of staff, Gen. Jack Keane.

In November, the Bush administration joined the rethinking. The participants in that process looked at the whole range of criticisms and formal critiques of what the U.S. had been doing in Iraq to that point. They concluded the one thing that wouldn't change is the goal, mainly establishing a democratic government in Iraq. What would change, heretofore a nonsubject, were the strategic concept and the level of resources.

Some of this came out of Gen. Petraeus's Counterinsurgency Manual, some from U.S. commanders in the field and some from the military think tanks. Suggestions that had gotten a "no" before, now got a "yes."

Is it all a day late and a dollar short? Maybe. Some 20,000 more troops may be insufficient. The inevitable front-page casualty reports and blood-soaked photos may still drain the will of domestic pundits. But what we are seeing in the Petraeus command is the kind of step back that the military sometimes excels at. This the U.S. military at its potential best--remaking itself, as it did with the transition to training a volunteer army after Vietnam.

---

It is not the least bit obvious that this counterinsurgency plan will fail, and only the most churlishly neurotic Bush hater would want it to. The stakes for the region and the war on terror have been described many times. There is another reason: How this ends will have an important effect on the morale of our officer corps, the people who must summon the gumption to protect us. They deserve a final chance to succeed. This is the chance.

An idea one finds in the counterinsurgency literature, crucial to the success of any such strategy, is known as "unity of effort." Basically, it means all oars pulling in the same direction. The Iraqi government, for instance, has told the U.S. it will stop interfering in the military's rules of engagement. Tuesday's victorious 10-hour battle on Baghdad's Haifa Street, by a combined U.S.-Iraqi force, looked like a successful test of unified effort. It remains to discover whether anything resembling unity of effort can be achieved along Constitution Avenue.

Nothing would more raise the tenor of this debate than if some member of the Democratic Party would take ownership of the subject of military doctrine in Iraq. On the evidence of their statements the past 24 hours, barely a Democrat exists with a clue of what Gen. Petraeus is about to do or why.

Sen. Barack Obama, presidential second-runner, said, "We are not going to babysit a civil war." Democrats will get a chance soon at Senate confirmation hearings to question Gen. Petraeus. Babysitter is not the word he brings to mind. His appointment is the result of a ferment in American military thinking on Iraq that goes well past George Bush "alone." They should hear him out before deciding whether to support this effort, or remain in the opposition.

Mr. Henninger is deputy editor of The Wall Street Journal's editorial page. His column appears Fridays in the Journal and on OpinionJournal.com.

[Used with permission from OpinionJournal.com, a web site from Dow Jones & Company, Inc.]

John McCain on 'surging'

John McCain has a short piece at Powerline that advocates a surge of U.S. troops in Iraq.

We have made many mistakes since 2003, and these will not be easily reversed. But from everything I witnessed on my most recent visit, I believe that success is still possible. Even greater than the costs incurred thus far and in the future are the catastrophic consequences that would ensue from our failure in Iraq. By surging troops and bringing security to Baghdad and other areas, we will give the Iraqis the best possible chance to succeed. Our national security, and that of our friends and allies, compels us to make our best effort to prevail, and to do it now.

Recommended.

Strategy analysis

Bill Roggio, over at The Fourth Rail has some important things to say about the new strategy for Iraq.

President Bush articulated a comprehensive and intelligent strategy to turn the tide in Iraq. The new strategy deals with some major shortcomings in the Iraq theater over the past few years: lack of pressure on the Iraqi government to take charge of security and rein in Muqtada al-Sadr and the militias; restrictive rules of engagement; the absence of the Commander's Emergency Response Program program, which puts cash in the hands of combat commanders; the absence of a public campaign against Iran and Syria; lack of involvement of State, Commerce, and other important U.S. institutions at a provincial level. The new Iraq strategy provides solutions to these problems.

Questions still remain. Are 17,500 U.S. troops enough to secure Baghdad? Are we devoting too few forces to Anbar? Will the Iraqi government follow through on its pledge to deal with Sadr and the militias? Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki has balked in the past, but his recent statements have been encouraging. Will Iran, which is rightfully a charter member of the Axis of Evil, be dealt with meaningfully? The strategy towards Iran and Syria appears to be largely defensive, although the public announcement of the deployment of carrier battle groups and Patriot missile batteries sends a strong message. Will the changes in the rules of engagement include ending the dangerous and demoralizing “catch and release” program, where arrested insurgents are freed and allowed to return to the streets, where they continue committing attacks due to an overly generous military justice system? Are State, Commerce, and other civilian agencies truly committed to success in Iraq? Their commitment to date has been paltry, and the U.S. military has shouldered the burden of reconstruction the country.

He then proceeds to amplify on that. Recommended.

Some ideas for a successful Iraq strategy

Amir Taheri, over at the UK Times Online has some good tips on how to deal with Iraq. He begins with some insightful comments:

In immediate terms, therefore, Mr Bush is left with “go big”, the option his opponents have already attacked. Those familiar with Iraq know that the real war for its future is waged in the United States and, to a lesser extent, Britain. The terrorists have no hope of riding in triumph into Baghdad, but they continue to fight to persuade US and British opinion that the war is lost and that new Iraq does not deserve further support. Moreover, some in the new Iraqi elite have become fence-sitters. Worried that the US may run away, they have sought insurance from Tehran or, in the case of Sunni Arabs, the jihadis.

So, what should Mr Bush do? The last thing to do is to seek a bipartisan policy. Too many Democrats have invested too much in the hope that Iraq fails for them to agree to help Mr Bush to ensure success.

What is needed, therefore, is a nonpartisan policy. This means a policy that safeguards what has already been achieved in Iraq, without further provoking Democrats. In such a policy, there is room for all three options in the Pentagon paper. It is possible to chew gum and walk at the same time.

Then he goes on give ten tips on how best to deal with the situation in Iraq. Here are the first three:

• Whatever you announce, make sure that your Administration and military commanders believe in it. Journalists covering Iraq know that there are three Iraq wars: one inside Iraq, another in the US political theatre and a third within the Administration.
• Focus on the home front. Many Americans do not realise that Iraq is one theatre in a global war from Indonesia to Algeria, passing by Afghanistan, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon and the Palestinian territories. Mr Bush must become explainer-in-chief and mobilise support for defeating jihadism and reshaping the Middle East with the help of moderate, reformist forces.
• Remind the Iraqis that the US and allies have fulfilled their promise to take power away from Saddamites and return it to the people. Force was used to remove impediments to democratisation. But, force cannot be used to build democracy. That requires the effort of the Iraqis. Some Iraqis, including many in the new elite, have developed a “room-service” mentality, expecting the US to do everything. The President must disabuse them of that notion.

Go read the rest. He's got some good ideas.

A new strategy

The President's address to the nation is in the extended entry.

Good evening. Tonight in Iraq, the Armed Forces of the United States are engaged in a struggle that will determine the direction of the global war on terror -- and our safety here at home. The new strategy I outline tonight will change America's course in Iraq, and help us succeed in the fight against terror.

When I addressed you just over a year ago, nearly 12 million Iraqis had cast their ballots for a unified and democratic nation. The elections of 2005 were a stunning achievement. We thought that these elections would bring the Iraqis together, and that as we trained Iraqi security forces we could accomplish our mission with fewer American troops.

But in 2006, the opposite happened. The violence in Iraq -- particularly in Baghdad -- overwhelmed the political gains the Iraqis had made. Al Qaeda terrorists and Sunni insurgents recognized the mortal danger that Iraq's elections posed for their cause, and they responded with outrageous acts of murder aimed at innocent Iraqis. They blew up one of the holiest shrines in Shia Islam -- the Golden Mosque of Samarra -- in a calculated effort to provoke Iraq's Shia population to retaliate. Their strategy worked. Radical Shia elements, some supported by Iran, formed death squads. And the result was a vicious cycle of sectarian violence that continues today.

The situation in Iraq is unacceptable to the American people -- and it is unacceptable to me. Our troops in Iraq have fought bravely. They have done everything we have asked them to do. Where mistakes have been made, the responsibility rests with me.

It is clear that we need to change our strategy in Iraq. So my national security team, military commanders, and diplomats conducted a comprehensive review. We consulted members of Congress from both parties, our allies abroad, and distinguished outside experts. We benefitted from the thoughtful recommendations of the Iraq Study Group, a bipartisan panel led by former Secretary of State James Baker and former Congressman Lee Hamilton. In our discussions, we all agreed that there is no magic formula for success in Iraq. And one message came through loud and clear: Failure in Iraq would be a disaster for the United States.

The consequences of failure are clear: Radical Islamic extremists would grow in strength and gain new recruits. They would be in a better position to topple moderate governments, create chaos in the region, and use oil revenues to fund their ambitions. Iran would be emboldened in its pursuit of nuclear weapons. Our enemies would have a safe haven from which to plan and launch attacks on the American people. On September the 11th, 2001, we saw what a refuge for extremists on the other side of the world could bring to the streets of our own cities. For the safety of our people, America must succeed in Iraq.

The most urgent priority for success in Iraq is security, especially in Baghdad. Eighty percent of Iraq's sectarian violence occurs within 30 miles of the capital. This violence is splitting Baghdad into sectarian enclaves, and shaking the confidence of all Iraqis. Only Iraqis can end the sectarian violence and secure their people. And their government has put forward an aggressive plan to do it.

Our past efforts to secure Baghdad failed for two principal reasons: There were not enough Iraqi and American troops to secure neighborhoods that had been cleared of terrorists and insurgents. And there were too many restrictions on the troops we did have. Our military commanders reviewed the new Iraqi plan to ensure that it addressed these mistakes. They report that it does. They also report that this plan can work.

Now let me explain the main elements of this effort: The Iraqi government will appoint a military commander and two deputy commanders for their capital. The Iraqi government will deploy Iraqi Army and National Police brigades across Baghdad's nine districts. When these forces are fully deployed, there will be 18 Iraqi Army and National Police brigades committed to this effort, along with local police. These Iraqi forces will operate from local police stations -- conducting patrols and setting up checkpoints, and going door-to-door to gain the trust of Baghdad residents.

This is a strong commitment. But for it to succeed, our commanders say the Iraqis will need our help. So America will change our strategy to help the Iraqis carry out their campaign to put down sectarian violence and bring security to the people of Baghdad. This will require increasing American force levels. So I've committed more than 20,000 additional American troops to Iraq. The vast majority of them -- five brigades -- will be deployed to Baghdad. These troops will work alongside Iraqi units and be embedded in their formations. Our troops will have a well-defined mission: to help Iraqis clear and secure neighborhoods, to help them protect the local population, and to help ensure that the Iraqi forces left behind are capable of providing the security that Baghdad needs.

Many listening tonight will ask why this effort will succeed when previous operations to secure Baghdad did not. Well, here are the differences: In earlier operations, Iraqi and American forces cleared many neighborhoods of terrorists and insurgents, but when our forces moved on to other targets, the killers returned. This time, we'll have the force levels we need to hold the areas that have been cleared. In earlier operations, political and sectarian interference prevented Iraqi and American forces from going into neighborhoods that are home to those fueling the sectarian violence. This time, Iraqi and American forces will have a green light to enter those neighborhoods -- and Prime Minister Maliki has pledged that political or sectarian interference will not be tolerated.

I've made it clear to the Prime Minister and Iraq's other leaders that America's commitment is not open-ended. If the Iraqi government does not follow through on its promises, it will lose the support of the American people -- and it will lose the support of the Iraqi people. Now is the time to act. The Prime Minister understands this. Here is what he told his people just last week: "The Baghdad security plan will not provide a safe haven for any outlaws, regardless of [their] sectarian or political affiliation."

This new strategy will not yield an immediate end to suicide bombings, assassinations, or IED attacks. Our enemies in Iraq will make every effort to ensure that our television screens are filled with images of death and suffering. Yet over time, we can expect to see Iraqi troops chasing down murderers, fewer brazen acts of terror, and growing trust and cooperation from Baghdad's residents. When this happens, daily life will improve, Iraqis will gain confidence in their leaders, and the government will have the breathing space it needs to make progress in other critical areas. Most of Iraq's Sunni and Shia want to live together in peace -- and reducing the violence in Baghdad will help make reconciliation possible.

A successful strategy for Iraq goes beyond military operations. Ordinary Iraqi citizens must see that military operations are accompanied by visible improvements in their neighborhoods and communities. So America will hold the Iraqi government to the benchmarks it has announced.

To establish its authority, the Iraqi government plans to take responsibility for security in all of Iraq's provinces by November. To give every Iraqi citizen a stake in the country's economy, Iraq will pass legislation to share oil revenues among all Iraqis. To show that it is committed to delivering a better life, the Iraqi government will spend $10 billion of its own money on reconstruction and infrastructure projects that will create new jobs. To empower local leaders, Iraqis plan to hold provincial elections later this year. And to allow more Iraqis to re-enter their nation's political life, the government will reform de-Baathification laws, and establish a fair process for considering amendments to Iraq's constitution.

America will change our approach to help the Iraqi government as it works to meet these benchmarks. In keeping with the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group, we will increase the embedding of American advisers in Iraqi Army units, and partner a coalition brigade with every Iraqi Army division. We will help the Iraqis build a larger and better-equipped army, and we will accelerate the training of Iraqi forces, which remains the essential U.S. security mission in Iraq. We will give our commanders and civilians greater flexibility to spend funds for economic assistance. We will double the number of provincial reconstruction teams. These teams bring together military and civilian experts to help local Iraqi communities pursue reconciliation, strengthen the moderates, and speed the transition to Iraqi self-reliance. And Secretary Rice will soon appoint a reconstruction coordinator in Baghdad to ensure better results for economic assistance being spent in Iraq.

As we make these changes, we will continue to pursue al Qaeda and foreign fighters. Al Qaeda is still active in Iraq. Its home base is Anbar Province. Al Qaeda has helped make Anbar the most violent area of Iraq outside the capital. A captured al Qaeda document describes the terrorists' plan to infiltrate and seize control of the province. This would bring al Qaeda closer to its goals of taking down Iraq's democracy, building a radical Islamic empire, and launching new attacks on the United States at home and abroad.

Our military forces in Anbar are killing and capturing al Qaeda leaders, and they are protecting the local population. Recently, local tribal leaders have begun to show their willingness to take on al Qaeda. And as a result, our commanders believe we have an opportunity to deal a serious blow to the terrorists. So I have given orders to increase American forces in Anbar Province by 4,000 troops. These troops will work with Iraqi and tribal forces to keep up the pressure on the terrorists. America's men and women in uniform took away al Qaeda's safe haven in Afghanistan -- and we will not allow them to re-establish it in Iraq.

Succeeding in Iraq also requires defending its territorial integrity and stabilizing the region in the face of extremist challenges. This begins with addressing Iran and Syria. These two regimes are allowing terrorists and insurgents to use their territory to move in and out of Iraq. Iran is providing material support for attacks on American troops. We will disrupt the attacks on our forces. We'll interrupt the flow of support from Iran and Syria. And we will seek out and destroy the networks providing advanced weaponry and training to our enemies in Iraq.

We're also taking other steps to bolster the security of Iraq and protect American interests in the Middle East. I recently ordered the deployment of an additional carrier strike group to the region. We will expand intelligence-sharing and deploy Patriot air defense systems to reassure our friends and allies. We will work with the governments of Turkey and Iraq to help them resolve problems along their border. And we will work with others to prevent Iran from gaining nuclear weapons and dominating the region.

We will use America's full diplomatic resources to rally support for Iraq from nations throughout the Middle East. Countries like Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, and the Gulf States need to understand that an American defeat in Iraq would create a new sanctuary for extremists and a strategic threat to their survival. These nations have a stake in a successful Iraq that is at peace with its neighbors, and they must step up their support for Iraq's unity government. We endorse the Iraqi government's call to finalize an International Compact that will bring new economic assistance in exchange for greater economic reform. And on Friday, Secretary Rice will leave for the region, to build support for Iraq and continue the urgent diplomacy required to help bring peace to the Middle East.

The challenge playing out across the broader Middle East is more than a military conflict. It is the decisive ideological struggle of our time. On one side are those who believe in freedom and moderation. On the other side are extremists who kill the innocent, and have declared their intention to destroy our way of life. In the long run, the most realistic way to protect the American people is to provide a hopeful alternative to the hateful ideology of the enemy, by advancing liberty across a troubled region. It is in the interests of the United States to stand with the brave men and women who are risking their lives to claim their freedom, and to help them as they work to raise up just and hopeful societies across the Middle East.

From Afghanistan to Lebanon to the Palestinian Territories, millions of ordinary people are sick of the violence, and want a future of peace and opportunity for their children. And they are looking at Iraq. They want to know: Will America withdraw and yield the future of that country to the extremists, or will we stand with the Iraqis who have made the choice for freedom?

The changes I have outlined tonight are aimed at ensuring the survival of a young democracy that is fighting for its life in a part of the world of enormous importance to American security. Let me be clear: The terrorists and insurgents in Iraq are without conscience, and they will make the year ahead bloody and violent. Even if our new strategy works exactly as planned, deadly acts of violence will continue -- and we must expect more Iraqi and American casualties. The question is whether our new strategy will bring us closer to success. I believe that it will.

Victory will not look like the ones our fathers and grandfathers achieved. There will be no surrender ceremony on the deck of a battleship. But victory in Iraq will bring something new in the Arab world -- a functioning democracy that polices its territory, upholds the rule of law, respects fundamental human liberties, and answers to its people. A democratic Iraq will not be perfect. But it will be a country that fights terrorists instead of harboring them -- and it will help bring a future of peace and security for our children and our grandchildren.

This new approach comes after consultations with Congress about the different courses we could take in Iraq. Many are concerned that the Iraqis are becoming too dependent on the United States, and therefore, our policy should focus on protecting Iraq's borders and hunting down al Qaeda. Their solution is to scale back America's efforts in Baghdad -- or announce the phased withdrawal of our combat forces. We carefully considered these proposals. And we concluded that to step back now would force a collapse of the Iraqi government, tear the country apart, and result in mass killings on an unimaginable scale. Such a scenario would result in our troops being forced to stay in Iraq even longer, and confront an enemy that is even more lethal. If we increase our support at this crucial moment, and help the Iraqis break the current cycle of violence, we can hasten the day our troops begin coming home.

In the days ahead, my national security team will fully brief Congress on our new strategy. If members have improvements that can be made, we will make them. If circumstances change, we will adjust. Honorable people have different views, and they will voice their criticisms. It is fair to hold our views up to scrutiny. And all involved have a responsibility to explain how the path they propose would be more likely to succeed.

Acting on the good advice of Senator Joe Lieberman and other key members of Congress, we will form a new, bipartisan working group that will help us come together across party lines to win the war on terror. This group will meet regularly with me and my administration; it will help strengthen our relationship with Congress. We can begin by working together to increase the size of the active Army and Marine Corps, so that America has the Armed Forces we need for the 21st century. We also need to examine ways to mobilize talented American civilians to deploy overseas, where they can help build democratic institutions in communities and nations recovering from war and tyranny.

In these dangerous times, the United States is blessed to have extraordinary and selfless men and women willing to step forward and defend us. These young Americans understand that our cause in Iraq is noble and necessary -- and that the advance of freedom is the calling of our time. They serve far from their families, who make the quiet sacrifices of lonely holidays and empty chairs at the dinner table. They have watched their comrades give their lives to ensure our liberty. We mourn the loss of every fallen American -- and we owe it to them to build a future worthy of their sacrifice.

Fellow citizens: The year ahead will demand more patience, sacrifice, and resolve. It can be tempting to think that America can put aside the burdens of freedom. Yet times of testing reveal the character of a nation. And throughout our history, Americans have always defied the pessimists and seen our faith in freedom redeemed. Now America is engaged in a new struggle that will set the course for a new century. We can, and we will, prevail.

We go forward with trust that the Author of Liberty will guide us through these trying hours. Thank you and good night.

Taking the fight to the terrorists

The U.S. special ops going on in and near Somalia is just another example of America's strategy to take the fight to the terrorists. And we are bagging some foes from the last decade:

The suspected al-Qaeda militant who planned the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in east Africa was killed in an American airstrike in Somalia, an official said Wednesday.

"I have received a report from the American side chronicling the targets and list of damage," Abdirizak Hassan, the Somali president's chief of staff, told The Associated Press. "One of the items they were claiming was that Fazul Abdullah Mohammed is dead."

Unfortunately, this is the only way we are going to be able to root out many of these radical terrorists. Our military takes its role of protecting this nation and its citizens very seriously. Our polity needs to do likewise.

A case for a troop surge

Senator Joe Lieberman has recently returned from Iraq and says that he favors sending more troops there. He wrote an article after Christmas detailing his case for why he believes that.

The article, overall, makes a good case for increasing the number of warfighters in Iraq, but one paragraph in particular caught my attention:

In Baghdad and Ramadi, I found that it was the American colonels, even more than the generals, who were asking for more troops. In both places these soldiers showed a strong commitment to the cause of stopping the extremists. One colonel followed me out of the meeting with our military leaders in Ramadi and said with great emotion, "Sir, I regret that I did not have the chance to speak in the meeting, but I want you to know on behalf of the soldiers in my unit and myself that we believe in why we are fighting here and we want to finish this fight. We know we can win it."

The colonels, majors, and captains are the ones who have the best view of their part of the war. It is meaningful that they are saying the same things that the generals are saying. And no, in my experience, it is not a common thing in the U.S. armed forces for officers to be ordered to say certain things to congressmen (or any one else, for that matter). In fact, I doubt seriously that any U.S. officer would even consider giving, let alone accepting, such an order.

Senator Lieberman goes on to discuss the reasons that we must not lose the war in Iraq.

As the hostile regimes in Iran and Syria appreciate -- at times, it seems, more keenly than we do -- failure in Iraq would be a strategic and moral catastrophe for the United States and its allies. Radical Islamist terrorist groups, both Sunni and Shiite, would reap victories simultaneously symbolic and tangible, as Iraq became a safe haven in which to train and strengthen their foot soldiers and Iran's terrorist agents. Hezbollah and Hamas would be greatly strengthened against their moderate opponents. One moderate Palestinian leader told me that a premature U.S. exit from Iraq would be a victory for Iran and the groups it is supporting in the region. Meanwhile, the tens of thousands of Iraqis who have bravely stood with us in the hope of a democratic future would face the killing fields.

And then he concludes by reiterating our long-term reasons for staying in Iraq until the job is done, but dismisses the short-sightedness of those seemingly ADD-addled (ADDled?) proponents of cut-and-run.

In Iraq today we have a responsibility to do what is strategically and morally right for our nation over the long term -- not what appears easier in the short term. The daily scenes of death and destruction are heartbreaking and infuriating. But there is no better strategic and moral alternative for America than standing with the moderate Iraqis until the country is stable and they can take over their security. Rather than engaging in hand-wringing, carping or calls for withdrawal, we must summon the vision, will and courage to take the difficult and decisive steps needed for success and, yes, victory in Iraq. That will greatly advance the cause of moderation and freedom throughout the Middle East and protect our security at home.

Go read the whole thing. Highly recommended.

The capitulation of the West?

Daniel Pipes, director of the Middle East Forum and author of Miniatures (Transaction Publishers), has an unsettling analysis of how the West could lose in its struggle against radical Islamism. He details some very real capabilities that Islamists (defined as persons who demand to live by the sacred law of Islam, the Sharia) has in this asymmetric war we are now in.

Islamists deploy formidable capabilities, however, that go far beyond small-scale terrorism:

• A potential access to weapons of mass destruction that could devastate Western life.
• A religious appeal that provides deeper resonance and greater staying power than the artificial ideologies of fascism or communism.
• An impressively conceptualized, funded, and organized institutional machinery that successfully builds credibility, goodwill, and electoral success.
• An ideology capable of appealing to Muslims of every size and shape, from Lumpenproletariat to privileged, from illiterates to Ph.D.s, from the well-adjusted to psychopaths, from Yemenis to Canadians. The movement almost defies sociological definition.
• A non-violent approach – what I call "lawful Islamism" – that pursues Islamification through educational, political, and religious means, without recourse to illegality or terrorism. Lawful Islamism is proving successful in Muslim-majority countries like Algeria and Muslim-minority ones like the United Kingdom.
• A huge number of committed cadres. If Islamists constitute 10% to 15% of the Muslim population worldwide, they number some 125 to 200 million persons, or a far greater total than all the fascists and communists, combined, who ever lived.

The analysis begins by describing three potentially fatal flaws in prevailing Western attitudes: pacifism, self-hatred, and complacency.

Alarmism? Perhaps. Pessimistic? Definitely. However, the West has been ignoring increasingly common indicators of our culture/civilization being subverted by that of Islam, and one day, I fear, we will regret it . . .

Recommended reading.

Exposing myths

Victor Davis Hanson exposes some myths about the U.S. military. And points out some interesting historical analogies:

Most obvious is the inability of our conventional forces to translate amazing tactical success in Afghanistan and Iraq into rapid strategic victory, a transition of establishing a stable postbellum government that requires everything from winning hearts and minds to inspired counter-insurgency. These questions about the transition from conventional to asymmetrical warfare always have nagged—why did the armies of Sherman and Grant who crushed nearly half-a-million Confederate soldiers in a little over a year from summer 1864 to spring 1865, not secure Reconstruction in 12 miserable years of failure, in the face of a few thousands Klansmen, and assorted night riders?

Go read the whole thing.

What to do next

Dan Senor and Roman Martinez, who previously served as foreign-policy advisers to the Bush administration, based in Baghdad from April 2003 through June 2004, outline a strategy for success in Iraq.

I've reprinted the whole thing in the extended entry.

Dynamic Ideas for Iraq
How about a "counterinsurgency economic czar"?

BY DAN SENOR AND ROMAN MARTINEZ
Friday, January 5, 2007 12:01 a.m. EST

The president is on the cusp of making the most important decision of his second term: increasing our troop presence in Baghdad and Anbar in an effort to stave off Iraqi civil war. A troop surge into Baghdad will not solve problems overnight. But by helping to establish security, more troops can weaken the insurgency, which is the first step to addressing most of Iraq's other problems, including the growth of Shiite militias. Here are things for the president to consider as he moves forward:

• No more half measures.With a possible troop increase gaining steam, some military officers at the Pentagon and in Baghdad are advocating only a temporary and minor increase of forces which they view as a reasonable compromise from their minimalist position. But 10,000-15,000 more troops would be insufficient to stabilize Baghdad and at the same time maintain a strong presence in Anbar, where the insurgency is likely to spill over if chased out of the capital. Such an approach would replicate the failures of "Operations Together Forward I and II" in 2006, when troop increases of 7,000 and 3,500 were unable to bring down the violence.

  In light of the deteriorating situation in Iraq--and the president's anemic poll ratings--this may be his last opportunity to shift his Iraq policy for good. This means erring on the side of more troops, not fewer--even if it is politically painful in the short run. If the president decides to add more troops, he will not score points at home for deciding on a smaller increase. Any size surge will be controversial. So he should go for a number that maximizes chances for success.

• A new military strategy calls for military leaders who "own" the change. Donald Rumsfeld has been cast as the architect of our current military strategy--focused on training Iraqi soldiers and minimizing the U.S. footprint. But outgoing Central Command Chief John Abizaid and Iraq Commanding Gen. George Casey have also been firm backers of Mr. Rumsfeld's approach.

  A fresh plan centered around a surge in troops will require military leaders who are as invested in the new strategy as Gens. Abizaid and Casey are behind the current approach. Gen. Jack Keane, a former vice chief of the U.S. Army, has been an instrumental advocate for a substantial surge. He is well-respected among the Pentagon brass, rank-and-file troops and civilian policy makers. The president should call him out of retirement and appoint him to head Central Command, as Gen. Abizaid's successor. He should also send Lt. Gen. David Petraeus--a two-tour Iraq veteran who just finished crafting a new counterinsurgency doctrine for U.S. forces--back to Baghdad to replace Gen. Casey, who is set to rotate out of Iraq in the coming months.

• Economic aid must be matched by dramatic distribution reform. The administration is considering proposals by the Joint Chiefs of Staff and field commanders to pair a troop increase with a funding surge for new Iraq jobs programs. But this only makes sense if there are vast changes in how the new programs are managed by the U.S. and Iraqi bureaucracies.

  The funds appropriated by our government barely affect the lives of average Iraqis. This is because large-scale U.S. reconstruction programs continue to be subject to Federal Acquisition Regulations applicable in peacetime. This means that major government contracts for Iraq are subjected, in advance, to the slow and cumbersome "Request For Proposal" process. An even larger cause of the bottleneck is that the Iraqi government lacks the manpower, infrastructure and decisiveness in its ministries to disperse funds effectively. So of those funds appropriated to the Iraqi government, only a small percentage ever moves from the government to the Iraqi people.

  To make a "New Deal"-style jobs program work in Iraq, the president should propose that Congress streamline the acquisition process to allow for rapid project approval, following the model of the enormously successful Commander's Emergency Response Program. He should also appoint a respected retired military leader or business executive with expertise in logistics management to oversee distribution of aid on the ground. Anything related to funding and contracting for Iraq is understandably a sensitive issue, especially given the new Democratic majority's focus on oversight. So the president should ask the Democratic congressional leadership to propose a candidate for this position of "counterinsurgency economic czar."

• Continue to support democracy and constitutionalism. As the situation has grown worse, some have called for abandoning the goal of democracy. If giving up on democracy could magically solve Iraq's other problems, it might be worth considering. But dropping support for democracy would be radically destabilizing. Shiite and Kurdish leaders would fear a move to disenfranchise their communities and restore a Sunni strongman to power. Instead, the president should continue to seek political solutions--alongside a new security strategy--via existing political and constitutional structures. This is an area where he deserves enormous credit: His commitment to democracy has been admirably steadfast.
• Become the briefer in chief. When announcing the troop surge, the president should also announce that he will come before the American people every four weeks with a prime-time update on the war. The goal should be to emulate FDR's wartime fireside chats, when Americans were told to be ready with their atlases so they could follow along. Each month, President Bush could provide Americans a live update--perhaps alongside his commanders, with maps, statistics, etc.--charting progress from the previous four weeks and outlining metrics for the next month.

This would be a dramatic change in the president's public management of the war, to be sure. But the hands-off, "trust-my-generals" style is not working. Rightly or wrongly, too many citizens believe the president does not own his military campaign. Now is the time to change the dynamic.

Messrs. Senor and Martinez served as foreign-policy advisers to the Bush administration, based in Baghdad from April 2003 through June 2004.

[Used with permission from OpinionJournal.com, a web site from Dow Jones & Company, Inc.]

Information warfare

George Packer has an excellent article in The New Yorker about knowing our enemy. He showcases a few independent thinkers who have some impressive ideas on how to conduct effective counterinsurgency operations against the jihadists.

Just before the 2004 American elections, Kilcullen was doing intelligence work for the Australian government, sifting through Osama bin Laden’s public statements, including transcripts of a video that offered a list of grievances against America: Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, global warming. The last item brought Kilcullen up short. “I thought, Hang on! What kind of jihadist are you?” he recalled. The odd inclusion of environmentalist rhetoric, he said, made clear that “this wasn’t a list of genuine grievances. This was an Al Qaeda information strategy.” Ron Suskind, in his book “The One Percent Doctrine,” claims that analysts at the C.I.A. watched a similar video, released in 2004, and concluded that “bin Laden’s message was clearly designed to assist the President’s reëlection.” Bin Laden shrewdly created an implicit association between Al Qaeda and the Democratic Party, for he had come to feel that Bush’s strategy in the war on terror was sustaining his own global importance. Indeed, in the years after September 11th Al Qaeda’s core leadership had become a propaganda hub. “If bin Laden didn’t have access to global media, satellite communications, and the Internet, he’d just be a cranky guy in a cave,” Kilcullen said.

This is a long article, but you should take the time to read the whole thing.

[Via Jack Kelly at Irish Pennants.]

Forging warriors

Bill Roggio, currently imbedded with the US Marines in Iraq, discusses the details of standing up the Iraqi Army.

The relationship between the Marines and the Iraqi Army has changed over the past year. The 1st Iraqi Army Division is now in the Fallujah region, and the 1st Brigade's sister unit, the 2nd Brigade, is now operating independently, with embedded Marine Military Transition Teams. Major David McCombs, the executive officer of the 3-2-1 MTT, said their mission is to “advise, assist and mentor the Iraqi Army, and what they do with this is up to them.” There is 1 MTT at the brigade level, and 1 MTT for each of the 3 light infantry battalions in the brigade.

The Marines of the 3rd Recon Military Transition Team (or MTT), advises the 3rd Battalion, 2nd Brigade of the 1st Division (3-2-1). The 3-2-1 MTT is made up of 15 personnel (11 trained MTTs with 4 augment Marines), who are embedded withing an Iraqi battalion (about 500 troops).

He provides a balanced assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of the MTT as well as the Iraqi units, and then makes some recommendations.

Recommended.

The ROC

Bill Roggio provides a description and analysis of his experiences as an embedded reporter in Fallujah.

The Military Transition Team for 3 Company, as well as the rest of 3rd Battalion, have truly moved into an advisory role. “They advise, assist and mentor the Iraqi Army, and what they do with this is up to them,” said Major David McCombs, the executive officer of MTT for 3rd Battalion. The other two MTTs for 1 and 2 Companies have the same role as 3 Company's MTT.

The Iraqi soldiers, or jundi, in southwestern Fallujah run multiple patrols on their own; the Marines do not accompany the jundi every time they leave the wire. They provide for their own food, ammunition, “3 Company gathers their intelligence, plan and execute their own operations,” said Lt. Cortez, the lead adviser at The ROC.

These soldiers are volunteers, and are highly motivated to kill “Ali Baba” - the name they give the insurgents. There are major shortcomings with the Iraqi Army in Fallujah: logistics, pay and the lack of heavy weapons hold the jundi back from being fully independent (this will be covered in more depth along with the police in future posts on the MTTs/PTTs). But a fighting spirit is not one of these shortcomings.

This is the kind of boots-on-the-ground information that we desperately need in this country to make an informed decision about our current and future involvement in building a democratic Iraq.

Compare and contrast . . .

Victor Davis Hansen does a little of that when he looks at the war in Iraq today and WWII 65 years ago.

Suffice to say that when the Democrats allege incompetence because we are not yet victorious, they forget we have lost 50 soldiers a month since September 11, not 8,000 as was true of every month during World War II. And it is much easier to carpet bomb Tokyo, as horrendously difficult as that was, than to go into Fallujah and sort out the terrorists from the “innocent” under the glare of a hostile globalized media, and a disunited American public, some of whom believe that Cindy Sheehan or Michael Moore should be consulted for their superior wisdom.

As a nation, we no longer know what it means to fight a defensive war with unrelenting resolve to eliminate the threat posed by our enemies.

In fact, with the notable exception of our military, we no longer know how to even fight a war as a nation.

We, deliberately or inadvertently, have empowered our enemies this last month or so by the Rumsfeld departure, the grandstanding comments about failure in the Gates confirmation hearing, the Bolton resignation, and now the Iraq Study Group, all of which conspired to convey the image of an overripe, juicy American plum easy to be picked off by assorted enemies.

I apologize for the pessimism in this post, but what, on Earth, is this nation coming to? What has happened to us?

A formula for success -- the Patriquin Strategy

Patterico has a post up that discusses a technique incorporating cooperation and support with the sheiks in Iraq.

The post has several links that you should follow, including one to a power point pesentation prepared by Captain Travis Patriquin that illustrates his tactic. Cpt. Patriquin died last week in an enemy attack.

But his tactic is proving to be an effective one. Let's hope that we can implement it all across Iraq, and make that a gesture of respect and gratitude for his sacrifice.

Islamic anti-jihadist speaks out

M. Zuhdi Jasser has an op-ed at the Free Muslims Coalition website that urges American Muslims to step out in faith and oppose the murderous jihadists -- more publicly and more energetically.

As a devout Muslim, I have watched this painfully protracted saga unravel, fearing what comes next. The media, especially print media, have bent over backward to hear minorities' fears. Yet public opinion has not seemed to budge in favor of the imams. The lesson here lies in why. It has to do with credibility.

We are all creatures of passion. This fiasco has stirred the passionate cry of victimization from the Muslim activist community and imam community. But where were the news conferences, the rallies to protest the endless litany of atrocities performed by people who act supposedly in my religion's name? Where are the denunciations, not against terrorism in the abstract, but clear denunciations of al-Qaida or Hamas, of Wahhabism or militant Islamism, of Darfurian genocide or misogyny and honor killings, to name a few? There is no cry, there is no rage. At best, there is the most tepid of disclaimers. In short, there is no passion. But for victimization, always.

Only when Americans see that animating passion will they believe that we Muslims are totally against the fascists that have hijacked our religion. There is only so much bandwidth in the American culture to focus upon Islam and Muslims. If we fill it with our shouts of victimization, then the real problems from within and outside our faith community will never be heard.

We need to support this voice in the wilderness. And nurture this sentiment. Not all practitioners of Islam are fascists.

Progress in Iraq

Lt. General Peter W. Chiarelli is preparing to hand over the reigns of the Multi-National Corps - Iraq to his successor tomorrow. He held a roundtable interview session with the press and had some interesting things to say:

“I happen to believe that we have tremendous strategic interests in what we're doing over here,” said Lt. Gen. Peter W. Chiarelli, MNC-I commanding general. “I happen to believe this is the most important conflict that we've been involved in the last 50 years.”

During the interview session Chiarelli expressed his views on the overall situation in Iraq.

“I hope we can start to focus with the new government, as it continues to get its legs underneath it,” Chiarelli said. “And I think it's absolutely essential that we give the Iraqis an opportunity to do exactly what they want to do, and that's to form their kind of democratic government here in Iraq. And no matter what we say back home, it's going to take time.

It doesn't sound like he thinks cut and run is a viable strategy, either.

ISG report -- a dissenting view

David Frum is not terribly convinced that the ISG has gotten it right. In fact, he takes exception to the ISG linking the Israel-Palestine conflict with the conflict in Iraq. Here's how he starts:

Have you seen the sly "demotivational" posters produced by Despair.com?

They look exactly like traditional motivational posters--pictures of lofty mountains, soaring eagles, etc.--but with subversively unexpected messages. My favourite: a poster that shows a half-dozen hands--male and female, black, white and brown--clasped together in solidarity, over the words: "None of us is as dumb as all of us."

I could not think of a more apt description of the just released report of the Iraq Study Group, also known as the Baker-Hamilton commission. The group included genuine Washington eminences like former secretary of state Lawrence Eagleburger and shrewd players like Vernon Jordan. I doubt that any one of them on his or her own could have produced anything quite so feeble and unconvincing as they have all produced together.

He then proceeds to back up his assertion with some convincing arguments.

Recommended.

Information warfare

Bill Roggio, currently in Fallujah, has a post up about the propoganda war in Iraq. Here's how he begins:

FALLUJAH, IRAQ: The information front in the Long War is perhaps the war's most vital. And it is one front where the West is perceived as losing. While Coalition forces and Middle Eastern allies face shadowy transnational terrorist organizations such as al-Qaeda and its affiliates on the battlefields of Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and elsewhere, the battle for hearts and minds is being fought on the Internet, print, cable and satellite television, and other forms of media. In Iraq, the al-Zawraa satellite television network is broadcasting insurgent propaganda 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

This is where we are losing against Islamic fascists -- not just in Iraq but throughout the world. Even some of our own citizens are beginning to believe this deceitful propaganda.

Scary, isn't it?

Ramadi, Iraq

The Associated Press has a surprisingly balanced article about the tough situation in Ramadi.

"Operation Squeeze Play" is proving easier than expected considering this 20-block section of southeastern Ramadi _ known as "Second Officer's District" because it's home to so many former leaders of Saddam Hussein's army _ was not so long ago a no-go zone for U.S. troops.

"You used to look at a map and it'd be like the Columbus-era, 'South of here lies dragons,' because nobody ever went there," said Capt. Jon Paul Hart, assistant operations officer for the Army's 1st Battalion, 37th Armored Regiment. "All we knew was that it was really bad, really dangerous."

Ramadi, the capital of the western, overwhelming Sunni Arab province of al-Anbar, has seen some of the bloodiest street battles of the war. Sunni insurgents remain well-entrenched here and continue to move freely through parts of downtown where Americans often dare not set foot.

At least six U.S. troops were killed in fierce fighting in the province on Wednesday, the military said.

But as the White House faces calls to revisit its Iraq policy, U.S. forces in Ramadi insist their strategy here _ taking ground and holding it _ is proving effective.

"You have to occupy ground and stay there," said Capt. Greg Pavlichko, commander of a company involved in "Squeeze Play." "You have to live where you're fighting and let the people see you're committed to an area."

Commanders also say that any progress in Ramadi will evaporate almost overnight if U.S. forces pull out of the city. There is speculation the U.S. may scale back its operations here and throughout Anbar to focus on the violence and chaos in Baghdad.

"I think to give up on Anbar would be to give up on Iraq," Hart said. "It would be giving up all that we've worked very hard, sacrificed a lot of lives, to gain."

This agrees with other reports written by journalists who are currently in Ramadi.

Go read the whole thing.

Fallujah, Revisited

MG William B. Caldwell IV recently visited Fallujah and reports that security and stability have greatly improved there.

If you follow the news coming out of Iraq, you have seen too many headlines about the bloodshed in Baghdad in recent days. As American servicemen and women prepare to spend a fourth holiday season trying to help build a new Iraq, these headlines have led some people to conclude that our mission may be hopeless.

However, my recent visit to Fallujah has reaffirmed my strong conviction that as bad as the situation may sometimes appear, there is still reason to be optimistic for Iraq’s future.

Although it has been out of the headlines for some time, take a minute to recall why the name Fallujah resonates so strongly in our collective memory. Perhaps the most disturbing images of Operation Iraqi Freedom emanated from Fallujah on March 31, 2004, as the bodies of four murdered American contractors were desecrated and the charred corpses hung off the Euphrates River Bridge for the world to see. The “Fallujah Brigade,” a unit comprised of former Iraqi army officers, failed to prevent warlords allied with Al Qaeda in Iraq from effectively taking over the city. Foreign fighters and terrorist insurgents imposed a Taliban-like regime over the city, torturing and beheading innocent people who just wanted to enjoy the freedoms that resulted from the fall of Saddam Hussein. (One torture chamber later uncovered included cages in the basement and a wall covered with bloody handprints). With more than 100,000 explosive rounds stockpiled in weapons caches throughout the city, these invaders of Fallujah exported scores of suicide bombers bent on mass murder. The population of Fallujah fled in droves, reducing the number of residents to only 50-60,000. By October 2004, Fallujah was a city without security, without stability, and seemingly without hope.

In order to rescue the people of Fallujah and eliminate it as a base of operations for Al Qaida, Coalition forces launched Operation Al Fajr, or “The Dawn.” Led by American Marines, Coalition Forces battled 2-3,000 terrorists in fierce and sustained urban combat. Although Fallujah was liberated, half the city was decimated by the intense combat.

What has happened to Fallujah since that ferocious battle?

Last week, I saw a city of 350,000 people who have made incredible progress over the past two years. In the aftermath of Operation Al Fajr, in March of 2005, there were 3,000 United States Marines and only 300 Iraqi Security Forces in Fallujah. Today, the people of the city are protected by 1,500 members of their own Iraqi Security Force and only 300 Marines. The police are comprised of native Fallujans, and enjoy strong support from the local population. They are able to patrol their own neighborhoods, enforce their own laws, and handle the transition to responsibility for their own security and growth. Despite the sectarian violence which plagues other parts of the country, I saw the commander of the local Iraqi Army unit, a Shi’a, sit and work productively with the local police chief, a Sunni – a relationship few would have believed possible in Fallujah just a year ago.

I attended a city council meeting, where a democratically elected mayor and city council led the deliberations about the peoples’ business. To be honest, the Council’s discussion of traffic control was not exciting. But the mundane business of a functioning democracy can be uneventful when its institutions are working properly. At the same time, it was exciting to witness democracy in action on soil that once seemed entirely inhospitable. Membership of the Fallujah Business Association has grown from only 20 members last February to over 350 today, demonstrating optimism for economic growth. I even saw a processing center where Fallujah welcomes persons displaced by instability elsewhere.

Fallujah’s transition has not been easy. Terrorists and insurgents are waging a brutal campaign of murder and intimidation against the city’s government and police force. Unemployment remains high, and there is still much rebuilding to be done. But Colonel Larry Nicholson and the young Marines of Regimental Combat Team-5 firmly believe they have turned Fallujah into a model of what Iraq can become. Iraqis themselves support this hope, as families have been arriving in Fallujah en masse to seek shelter from instability in other parts of Iraq.

In October 2004, the world saw the incredible courage of the Coalition Force, as Marines did their part to create hope for Iraqis. Today, visitors to Fallujah can see the courage of Iraqis for themselves.

Difficult times remain ahead for the U.S. and Coalition Forces in Iraq . Many sacrifices remain to be made by both U.S.servicemen and women and their Iraqi partners in Fallujah. But the city is an example of what can be achieved when courageous leaders, brave security forces, and hard-working citizens unite for a common goal – a secure and unified future. The progress in Fallujah demonstrates that with time and effort, recovery is possible in Iraq in the wake of brutal violence.

Photo Caption: Soldiers from the Iraqi Special Forces, Shawanis Brigade, raise the Iraqi National Flag in front of the office of the Mayor of Fallujah, Nov. 10.

Fallujah, Iraq

Bill Roggio is currently embedded with the 'Gators,' the Marines of Bravo Company, 2nd Assault Amphibious Battalion, commanded by Captain Eric Dominijanni. He is in the Anbar province and gives us some background and a situation report about accompanying a patrol on Route Mobile.

Today I patrolled Route Mobile with the Marines of 2nd Platoon, 3rd Section, lead by Staff Sergeant Joshua Meyers. The section calls itself The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. There a four tracks to a section, and 2nd Platoon, 3rd Section's AAVs are aptly named White Horse, Red Horse, Black Horse, and Pale Horse. I accompanied Red Horse, commanded by Sergeant Joseph Borgard.

This route can be dangerous. Insurgents drop roadside bombs out of cars, place them in craters or dig holes and bury them, in an attempt to kill Marines and destroy their vehicles. Four AAVs have been disabled in the three months since Bravo Company has been in theater, and the company was hit three times over the past week. A Marine was killed during one of these strikes.

Go read the whole thing.

Chaotic Iraq

Ralph Peters, in his normal in-your-face way, once again provides his perspective on the un-civil war going on in Iraq. Here's how he begins:

YOU can call her a blond, but she's still a redhead. The endless spitting match over whether Iraq is in a state of civil war is a media-driven grudge fight that ignores the complex reality. It's name-calling, not analysis.

A lot of this is just "get Bush" stuff from journalists whose biased reporting helped shape the dismal reality in Iraq and who now crow that they were right all along - the media as a self-licking ice-cream cone.

The good news - and, unfortunately, the bad news - is that Iraq is not in a state of civil war in the textbook sense. If it were, our military and political mission would be easier.

In a civil war, you have clearly defined sides struggling for political power, with organized military formations and parallel governments. You know who to kill and who is empowered to negotiate with you. You can pick a side and stick to it.

Unleashed, our military could smash any enemy in an open civil war. Even our diplomats would have trouble preventing an American victory.

But the violence in Iraq comes from overlapping groups of terrorists, militias, insurgents, death squads, gangsters, foreign agents and factionalized government security forces engaging in layers of savage religious, ethnic, political and economic struggles - with an all-too-human lust for revenge spicing the mix.

He says some difficult things, but he makes some good points.

And what he says is consistent with what some of our generals are saying.

Go read the rest.

Listen to this general

Since Rumsfeld's critics maintained that he did not listen to his generals, perhaps they will listen to the CENTCOM commander.

And while admitting that the recent upturn in sectarian violence in Iraq is disturbing, Abizaid said politicians cannot set arbitrary deadlines for the withdrawal of American troops.

"We all want to leave when we can, but the most important thing must be the stability of the region. We must stabilize Iraq. It's vitally important to us," he said.

Abizaid also admitted that the challenges in the Middle East extend far beyond Iraq's borders, and it will require a concerted effort by several countries - including Pakistan and Saudi Arabia - to meet them.

"We must defeat the extremism of bin Laden and his associated movement. It's murderous. It's ruthless. It's very capable. It's got strength as a network unlike any nonstate actor has ever seen before. We've got to defeat it," he said.

"Think of it as an opportunity to confront fascism in 1920 if only we'd had the guts to do it then," he continued. "I believe that if we don't have guts enough to confront this ideology today, we will move toward World War III tomorrow."

Let us hope and pray that the powers that be in Washington, D.C. are, in fact, listening to our generals.

An alternate view

Marine officer Josh Manchester has some good ideas on how to press forward in Iraq.

His six-part plan goes like this:

1. Dramatically expand the training and advisory efforts.

6. Redeploy as many FOBBITS as possible.

He does a pretty good job of fleshing the plan out. To learn more of the plan, (and to find out what FOBBITS are), check out the whole column.

Beware the doomsaying about Iraq!

The Washington, D.C. Examiner has a cautionary editorial about the media's rush to judgement about Iraq.

President Bush was right to declare yesterday in Latvia that he will not withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq until the “mission is complete” because “we can accept nothing less than victory for our children and our grandchildren.” It appears Bush’s characteristic Texas stubbornness is the only thing standing between victory and the U.S. defeat that has all but been proclaimed by Washington’s foreign policy establishment and its friends in the mainstream media like “60 Minutes” reporter Lara Logan. She insisted in her weekend interview with Gen. John Abizaid that “managing the defeat” is America’s only option.

Go read the rest.

Voice in the wilderness

Michael Fumento makes a good point in this lamentation about two "journalists" who publish summary judgements based upon illicitly obtained (and incomplete) classified information and the opinion of an anonymous source.

Will the real Ramadi please stand up?

By Michael Fumento

"The U.S. military is no longer able to defeat a bloody insurgency in western Iraq [Al Anbar Province] or counter al Qaeda's rising popularity there, according to newly disclosed details from a classified Marine Corps intelligence report," began a front-page article in yesterday's Washington Post by Dafna Linzer and Thomas E. Ricks. It concerned the so-called "Devlin Report," a five-page document allegedly filled with gloom and doom. It contrasts completely with my article Return to Ramadi, in the Nov. 27 Weekly Standard, in which I write that the largest city in the province is slowly being reclaimed from al Qaeda. By coincidence, the day my article hit the stands the Times of London published an extensive article coming to the same conclusion as mine. But for the timing, you'd practically think one of us had plagiarized the other.

Why such different conclusions between our articles and the Post's and whom to believe?

It helps to know that the Times writer and I both went to and reported from Ramadi. We didn't summarize classified documents or quote unnamed sources. Linzer and Ricks stayed home and reported from Washington, relying entirely on an unpublished document in addition to quoting a "senior intelligence official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity." I have recently ripped the media's "Baghdad Brigade" for pretending it can cover a country the size of California from a single Iraqi city. What does that say about those who think they can cover Al Anbar from Washington?

All of this illustrates a point I and others have desperately tried to make, that you cannot understand the Anbar if you haven't been there. That's why I went three times to the province and twice to Ramadi itself. It wasn't to attend a beerfest. It may also help explain things that Ricks has a recent book declaring the war a "Fiasco," and hence is already inclined towards a pessimistic view. Top-notch milblogger Bill Roggio at The Fourth Rail declares, "Military and intelligence sources that I spoke to who have read the [Devlin] report indicate that they largely agree with [it] . . . but not as presented by the Washington Post." (Emphasis his.)

Alas, as much attention as my article has gotten it's hard to compete with a Post A1 article. Further, as Vietnam's Tet Offensive proved, guerrilla wars are as likely to be decided in the media as on the battlefield. It's looking like Iraq will prove no exception.

(Michael Fumento maintains a hybrid website at Fumento.com with blogs from his last two trips to Al Anbar, photos from all three trips, and two major articles from his trip earlier this year. Especially recommended is "The New Band of Brothers," which contains links to much combat video.)

And now for the rest of the story

The Washington Post recently reported the the Anbar province in Iraq is unsalvageable, and cited a classified Marine Corps intelligence report as its source. Bill Roggio, a war correspondent who is preparing to return to Iraq, calls foul and proceeds to disassemble the WaPo article. Here's how he begins:

The Washington Post has access to segments of the latest intelligence report on Anbar province, and reports the situation in western Iraq is dire. Military and an intelligence sources that I spoke to who have read the report indicate that they largely agree with the most recent assessment of the situation in Anbar in Colonel Devlin's report, but not as presented by the Washington Post. The situation in Anbar province, they say, has not changed much since the release of the last report.

Go read the whole thing. It is an excellent study in how the truth can be distorted -- even by someone who is not trying to. Whether or not that is the case here, I'll leave to you to decide.

Also refer to this post about Michael Fumento's experiences in Anbar as an embed with the 1st BCT. It is considerably more optomistic than the WaPo article.

Ramadi -- in the first person

Michael Fumento is currently embedded with the 1st Brigade Combat Team (BCT) in Ramadi, Iraq. He has a column up about his return to Ramadi and what he has found. And there is good news there for those who care.

If we can defeat the insurgent and terrorist forces here, there is no place we cannot defeat them. And from what I found, we are defeating them. It's painfully slow, and our men there are still dying in inordinate numbers from a broad variety of attacks. But a multitude of factors, including tribal cooperation, the continual introduction of more Iraqi army and police, the beginning of public works projects, the building of more Forward Operating Bases (FOBs), the installation of more small operational posts (OPs), and plunking down company-sized Combat Operation Posts (COPs) smack in the middle of hostile territory are destroying both the size and the mobility of the enemy. This time the rats are dying in place.

This is a long article, but gives a lot of good, first-hand, information. Before you believe the defeatist talk that is being bandied about by various pundits and politicians, read the whole article. You'll be glad you did.

And you'll marvel that this information, and more like it, is not getting wider dissemination by our media.

Or maybe not.

Staying power

Mark Steyn makes a good case that we cannot leave Iraq in defeat. Here's his conclusion (emphasis added):

As it is, we're in a very dark place right now. It has been a long time since America unambiguously won a war, and to choose to lose Iraq would be an act of such parochial self-indulgence that the American moment would not endure, and would not deserve to. Europe is becoming semi-Muslim, Third World basket-case states are going nuclear, and, for all that 40 percent of planetary military spending, America can't muster the will to take on pipsqueak enemies. We think we can just call off the game early, and go back home and watch TV.

It doesn't work like that. Whatever it started out as, Iraq is a test of American seriousness. And, if the Great Satan can't win in Vietnam or Iraq, where can it win? That's how China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, Sudan, Venezuela and a whole lot of others look at it. "These Colors Don't Run" is a fine T-shirt slogan, but in reality these colors have spent 40 years running from the jungles of Southeast Asia, the helicopters in the Persian desert, the streets of Mogadishu. ... To add the sands of Mesopotamia to the list will be an act of weakness from which America will never recover.

Go read how he got there.

Bin Laden's election

War correspondent Michael Fumento tells it like he sees it.

In Mark Steyn's new column, "Hyperpower hiatus," he writes "What does it mean when the world's hyperpower, responsible for 40 percent of the planet's military spending, decides it cannot withstand a guerrilla war with historically low casualties against a ragbag of local insurgents and imported terrorists?" Let's be more specific. In the taking of the small island of Iwo Jima in 1945, the subject of a current film, the U.S. suffered almost 7,000 dead in a few weeks. The country had half the population it does now, therefore this was equivalent to 14,000 dead back then. In the Battle of Normandy the U.S. alone lost 29,000 men or today's equivalent of 58,000. In the Iraq conflict to date, fewer than 3,000 Americans have died over a period approaching four years. Therefore, says the new party in power in Congress, we must withdraw soon and with no chance of victory by anybody's definition except, of course, the Islamists'. Thank God we didn't have our present gutlessness during World War II, else the Germans and Japanese would have divided up the world. God help us that such gutlessness has descended upon us today. The Islamists have made it clear that they, too, would like to own the world.

Let's prove our enemies wrong!

The embed problem

Michael Fumento, who has been embedded three times with military units in Iraq, maintains that the dearth of embeds in Iraq is not the fault of our military. Here's how he begins:

The number of embeds in Iraq is so small it’s grotesque. During the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003, more than 600 reporters, TV crews and photographers were embedded with Coalition Forces, according to the Associated Press. Last year, during the vote to ratify a new constitution, there were 114. At the end of September, there only 11 and one of them was me.

As I’ve observed elsewhere, embeds offer a unique perspective on the war in that they’re actually viewing it. Contrast this with the MSM Baghdad press corps that bizarrely believes it can cover a country of 26 million people and the size of California from hotels in a single city using stringers, phone calls, and email. In other words, they may as well be back in the States except for their desire to have the coveted title of “War Correspondent.” Vietnam gave us the first war in virtually real time; Iraq is giving us the first virtual war.

Further, it speaks volumes that war critics like screenwriter-director Nora Ephron has vilified embeds, insisting they’re “too close” to the war. And reporters in New York covering the WTC attacks should have been in Iowa, right? What Ephron is really saying is that the American public has no right to know what’s happening in Iraq. Embeds, through their actions, declare the opposite.

But what accounts for this dearth of embeds?

Go read the rest.

Options in Iraq

Powerline breaks down America's involvement in Iraq and outlines a minimal approach. Here's his conclusion:

Would this state of affairs be acceptable? There's room for debate. But it seems likely that if the administration doesn't find some politically sustainable approach that avoids defeat, the Democrats sooner or later will impose defeat on the country.

Go read how he got there.

Now what?

Ralph Peters looks at how the results of the elections mean to our efforts in Iraq.

The Democratic win does bring us two benefits regarding Iraq. First, it means public accountability, something every administration, Republican or Democrat, needs. Second, it sends a message to the gang of looters atop Iraq's government that the free lunch won't last forever, that they've got to get serious about leading their country.

Of course, the Iraqis may scramble even more wildly to ingratiate themselves with sectarian factions and steal what's left to steal before we leave. Never underestimate the Arab genius for self-destruction.

So what now?

Advice to the Dems: You've won. Congratulations. Now get your extremists under control and assess Iraq honestly. And don't just mew about supporting our troops - do it.

Advice to the Bush administration: Don't take desperate measures in Iraq without thinking them all the way through. Mr. President, sit down one-on-one with the two- stars who command or commanded in Iraq - the fighting generals - without any Defense Department apparatchiks manipulating what you hear. Listen to the unfiltered truth.

Advice to Sen. McCain: Ask the tough questions before either the administration or the Democrats on the Hill make a bad situation worse in Iraq. Our government needs adult supervision. You're it.

I'm inclined to agree with him. More troops in Iraq are not going to help unless they have a clear mission with concrete objectives -- and the authority to use the necessary methods to achieve success.

Go read the whole thing. He makes some good points.

Rumsfeld resignation

Austin Bay, over at his blog provides some analysis of the Rumsfeld resignation -- with some help from his military buddies.

(1) I think the resignation wasn’t entirely contingent on the election– though the Democratic win made Rumsfeld resignation a certainty. Robert Gates (currently president of Texas A&M University) has worked with James Baker on the “War on Terror” strategy evaluation. The Baker ”bi-partisan” political fall-back position for prosecuting the war was already in the works.

(2) One of the very smart young officers I know suggests the resignation is political prep for prosecuting the war even more vociferously. I think he’s on to something.

(3) I am very skeptical of Nancy Pelosi’s “one hundred hours” promise. Her one hundred hours (that’s one hundred days on blog time) will be sound and fury and media sensation, but not much beyond that. Still, Rumsfeld is a scalp. Another one of the very smart troops says that should Pelosi-led investigations start in earnest, Rumsfeld is already two-months gone. A nice tactical political move, if the troop’s hunch is correct.

(4) The big race in 2006 was Lamont versus Lieberman. Joe Lieberman won. Joe’s core issue: VIctory in the War on Terror, which means victory in Iraq. That’s a warning to Nancy Pelosi and Co. If they go “nutsroots-Lamont Left” they will squander their victory. Ed Driscoll suggests 2006 is a race-to-the center. Lieberman has carved out one the strongest personal political position in America. For Joe, it’s November lemonade made from the bitter lemons of August.

Joe Lieberman is this man. Nancy Pelosi had better pay attention.

This is the problem the world still faces on November 8, 2006. It faced it on September 10, 2001, but darn few folks acknowledged it.

Recommended.

Why we should stay

The Washington Post has an article posted that maintains that soldiers in Iraq say that a pullout would have devastating results to the region.

"Pulling out now would be as bad or worse than going forward with no changes," [Capt. Jim] Modlin said. "Sectarian violence would be rampant, democracy would cease to exist, and the rule of law would be decimated. It's not 'stay the course,' and it's not 'cut and run' or other political catchphrases. There are people's lives here. There are so many different dynamics that go on here that a simple solution just isn't possible."

Maybe we should listen more to the people who are actually over there.

Go read the rest.

New York Times admits to WMD in Iraq!

The Times has radically changed its position on the presence of a mature nuclear program in Iraq.

Of course, they're spinning this to hurt Bush, yet the New York Times now maintains that Iraq's nuclear program was very close to developing actual weapons.

The documents, roughly a dozen in number, contain charts, diagrams, equations and lengthy narratives about bomb building that nuclear experts who have viewed them say go beyond what is available elsewhere on the Internet and in other public forums. For instance, the papers give detailed information on how to build nuclear firing circuits and triggering explosives, as well as the radioactive cores of atom bombs.

These are the same documents that the NYT has repeated disparaged as not being authentic.

What a bunch of hypocrites.

Ed Morrissey has more.

That appears to indicate that by invading in 2003, we followed the best intelligence of the UN inspectors to head off the development of an Iraqi nuke. This intelligence put Saddam far ahead of Iran in the nuclear pursuit, and made it much more urgent to take some definitive action against Saddam before he could build and deploy it. And bear in mind that this intelligence came from the UN, and not from the United States. The inspectors themselves developed it, and they meant to keep it secret. The FMSO site blew their cover, and they're very unhappy about it.

What other highlights has the Times now authenticated? We have plenty:

* 2001 IIS memo directing its agents to test mass grave sites in southern Iraq for radiation, and to use "trusted news agencies" to leak rumors about the lack of credibility of Coalition reporting on the subject. They specify CNN.

* The Blessed July operation, in which Saddam's sons planned a series of assassinations in London, Iran, and southern Iraq

* Saddam's early contacts with Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda from 1994-7

* UNMOVIC knew of a renewed effort to make ricin from castor beans in 2002, but never reported it

* The continued development of delivery mechanisms for biological and chemical weapons by the notorious "Dr. Germ" in 2002

Actually, we have much, much more. All of these documents underscore the threat posed by Saddam Hussein and show that his regime continued their work on banned weapons programs. We have made this case over and over again, but some people refused to believe the documents were genuine. Now we have no less of an authority than the New York Times to verify that the IIS documentation is not only genuine, but presents a powerful argument for the military action to remove Saddam from power.

The Times wanted readers to cluck their tongues at the Bush administration for releasing the documents, although Congress actually did that. However, the net result should be a complete re-evaluation of the threat Saddam posed by critics of the war. Let's see if the Times figures this out for themselves.

Let's carry this one step further:

With this newly affirmed evidence that Iraq was a year away from a nuclear weapons capability in 2003 we would be facing a nuclear-armed, Saddam-led Iraq in 2006 had we not invaded the country and removed him from power.

Certainly not a prospect any sane, peace-loving person would seek out.

UPDATE: Back in April, Fritz Umbach at Salon.com was quick to doubt the provenance of the very same set of documents and mentioned my belief that they were genuine:

American Geek crowed that the Iraqi documents reveal "Saddam did … in fact, have important dealings with al-Qaeda" and lamented that "New York Times, the AP, and their ilk" have not reported such "facts."

Well, I need lament about that no longer -- since the New York Times is now regarding those documents as factual. It's a pity that they only now assert the factual nature of the documents in an attempt to slam the Bush administration.

International diversity

Thomas Sowell makes some thoughtful observations about how diversity in Iraq may have slowed our nation-building efforts there.

He also makes equally thoughtful comments about finishing that effort.

I've reprinted the whole op-ed in the extended entry.

Diversity's Oppressions
Why Iraq has proven to be so hard to pacify.

BY THOMAS SOWELL
Monday, October 30, 2006 12:01 a.m. EST

Iraq is not the first war with ugly surprises and bloody setbacks. Even World War II, idealized in retrospect as it never was at the time--the war of "the greatest generation"--had a long series of disasters for Americans before victory was finally achieved.

The war began for Americans with the disaster at Pearl Harbor, followed by the tragic horror of the Bataan death march, the debacle at the Kasserine Pass and, even on the eve of victory, being caught completely by surprise by a devastating German counterattack that almost succeeded at the Battle of the Bulge.

Other wars--our own and other nations'--have likewise been full of nasty surprises and mistakes that led to bloodbaths. Nevertheless, the Iraq war has some special lessons for our time, lessons that both the left and the right need to acknowledge, whether or not they will.

---

What is it that has made Iraq so hard to pacify, even after a swift and decisive military victory? In one word: diversity.

That word has become a sacred mantra, endlessly repeated for years on end, without a speck of evidence being asked for or given to verify the wonderful benefits it is assumed to produce.

Worse yet, Iraq is only the latest in a long series of catastrophes growing out of diversity. These include "ethnic cleansing" in the Balkans, genocide in Rwanda and the Sudan, the million lives destroyed in intercommunal violence when India became independent in 1947 and the even larger number of Armenians slaughtered by Turks during World War I.

Despite much gushing about how we should "celebrate diversity," America's great achievement has not been in having diversity but in taming its dangers that have run amok in many other countries. Americans have by no means escaped diversity's oppressions and violence, but we have reined them in.

Another concept whose bitter falsity has been painfully revealed in Iraq is "nation-building." People are not building blocks, however much some may flatter themselves that they can arrange their fellow human beings' lives the way you can arrange pieces on a chess board.

The biggest and most fatuous example of nation-building occurred right after World War I, when the allied victors dismembered the Habsburg Empire and the Ottoman Empire. Woodrow Wilson assigned a young Walter Lippman to sit down with maps and population statistics and start drawing lines that would define new nations.

Iraq is one of those new nations. Like other artificial creations in the Balkans, Africa and elsewhere, it has never had the cohesion of nations that evolved over the centuries out of the experiences of peoples who worked out their own modi vivendi in one way or another.

Tito's dictatorship held Yugoslavia together, as other dictatorships held together other peoples forced into becoming a nation by the decisions of outsiders who drew their boundaries on maps and in some cases--Nigeria, for example--even gave them their national name.

Even before 9/11, there were some neoconservatives who talked about our achieving "national greatness" by creating democratic nations in various parts of the world.

---

How much influence their ideas have had on the actual course of events is probably something that will not be known in our generation. But we can at least hope that the Iraq tragedy will chasten the hubris behind notions of "nation-building" and chasten also the pious dogmatism of those who hype "diversity" at every turn, in utter disregard of its actual consequences at home or abroad. Free societies have prerequisites, and history has not given all peoples those prerequisites, which took centuries to evolve in the West.

However we got into Iraq, we cannot undo history--even recent history--by simply pulling out and leaving events to take their course in that strife-torn country. Whether or not we "stay the course," terrorists are certainly going to stay the course in Iraq and around the world.

Political spin may say that Iraq has nothing to do with the war on terror, but the terrorists themselves quite obviously believe otherwise, as they converge on that country with lethal and suicidal resolve.

Whether we want to or not, we cannot unilaterally end the war with international terrorists. Giving the terrorists an epoch-making victory in Iraq would only shift the location where we must face them or succumb to them.

Abandoning Iraqi allies to their fate would ensure that other nations would think twice before becoming or remaining our allies. With a nuclear Iran looming on the horizon, we are going to need all the allies we can get.

Mr. Sowell is the Rose and Milton Friedman Senior Fellow on Public Policy at the Hoover Institution. He is the author, most recently, of "Black Rednecks and White Liberals" (Encounter Books, 2005).

[Used with permission from OpinionJournal.com, a web site from Dow Jones & Company, Inc.]

"Unified Action"

. . . in 21st Century wars.

Austin Bay asks for Donald Rumsfeld's take on this critical issue. So far, in Iraq and Afghanistan, we've been making it up as we go along -- improvising.

But it's time to quit improvising. Effective "Unified Action" requires re-engineering 20th century Beltway bureaucracies -- which means thoughtful, sophisticated cooperation between the executive branch and Congress.

Read the rest.

Enabling terrorism

Ralph Peters does not mince words in this op-ed about how our attempts to 'protect human rights' have marginalized efforts to eliminate the insurgency in Iraq.

WHETHER the issue is domestic law and order or fighting foreign wars, the great fallacy of the left is the belief that protecting the "human rights" of killers is more important than the elementary human right of the vast majority - the innocent - to live unmolested by murderers and fanatics.

Whether the cry is "Free Mumia!" or "Close Guantanamo!" or "Bring the Troops Home Now!" the consistent purpose is to rescue killers from justice - no matter the cost to law-abiding citizens here or to the millions of Iraqis who truly desire peace.

Read it all. Even though I hesitate to agree with his assessment about the abject failure of our policy in Iraq, I have to concede that he makes some good points.

Time to put up or shut up

Ralph Peters makes a persuasive argument that it's time to let the Iraqis shoulder their load.

As this column stressed months ago, the test for whether we should remain in Iraq is straightforward: Will Iraqis fight in decisive numbers for their own elected, constitutional government? The insurgents, militiamen and foreign terrorists are willing to die for their causes. If "our" Iraqis won't match that strength of will, Iraq will fail.

If Iraq's leaders stop squabbling and lead, and if Iraq's soldiers and police fight resolutely for their constitutional state, we should be willing to stay "as long as it takes." But if they continue to wallow in ethnic and religious partisanship while doing as little as possible for their own country, we need to leave and let them face the consequences.

Give them one more year. And that's it.

Go read the whole thing.

Why we must fight

Ed Koch has a good op-ed about why we must continue to fight the jihadists.

It makes no difference in determining our current position whether we were right or wrong to go into Iraq in 2003; we are now there. To those who say, if we were wrong initially, we can never justify staying, I say, ridiculous. The enemy is worldwide Islamic terrorism, and its center today is Iraq. If we were to leave Iraq, would al-Qaeda and other groups allied with it stop their attacks on Americans? Certainly not. We were not in Iraq, nor was George W. Bush our President, when in 1993 Islamic terrorists bombed the World Trade Center killing six and injuring one thousand people; when Islamic terrorists blew up the U.S.S. Cole, killing 13 and injuring 33; when they blew up U.S. Army barracks in Saudi Arabia, killing 19 and injuring 515; when they blew up two American embassies in Africa, causing 257 deaths and 5,000 injuries. We were not in Iraq, and Bush was the President, when Islamic terrorists hijacked and drove passenger planes into the World Trade Center and Pentagon on September 11, 2001, killing some 3,000 people.

Recommended.

Who's really in denial?

William Kristol asks and answers the quoestion: 'Who's Really in Denial?'.

"Americans face the choice between two parties with two different attitudes on this war on terror."

--George W. Bush, September 28, 2006

President Bush is right. It would be nice if he weren't. The country would be better off if there were bipartisan agreement on what is at stake in the struggle against jihadist Islam. But despite areas of consensus, there is still a fundamental difference between the parties. Bush and the Republicans know we are in a serious war. It's not the Bush administration that is in a "State of Denial" (as the new Bob Woodward book has it). It's the Democrats.

Consider developments over the last week. Democrats hyped last Sunday's news stories breathlessly reporting on one judgment from April's National Intelligence Estimate (NIE)--that the war in Iraq has created more terrorists. More than would otherwise have been created if Saddam were still in power? Who knows? The NIE seems not even to have contemplated how many terrorists might have been created by our backing down, by Saddam's remaining in power to sponsor and inspire terror, and the like. (To read the sections of the NIE subsequently released is to despair about the quality of our intelligence agencies. But that's another story.) In any case, the NIE also made the obvious points that, going forward, "perceived jihadist success [in Iraq] would inspire more fighters to continue the struggle elsewhere," while jihadist failure in Iraq would inspire "fewer fighters . . . to carry on the fight."

What is the Democratic response to these latter judgments? Silence. The left wing of the party continues to insist on withdrawal now. The center of the party wants withdrawal on a vaguer timetable.

Bush, on other hand, understands that the only acceptable exit strategy is victory.

Go read the rest.

Over there

Charles Krauthammer has a good op-ed up at washingtonpost.com that discusses the NIE, terrorists, and the war in Iraq.

The question posed -- does the Iraq war increase or decrease the world supply of jihadists? -- is itself an exercise in counting angels on the head of a pin. Any answer would require a complex calculation involving dozens of unmeasurable factors, as well as construction of a complete alternate history of the world had the U.S. invasion of 2003 not happened.

Darkest before the dawn?

One can only hope . . .

Reporter Returns to Iraq, Finds Changing Attitudes

Updated 2:35 PM ET October 6, 2006

How bad is bad? After six weeks away from Iraq and returning to Baghdad, I find the city appears much worse than when I left. Last week, according to a U.S. military spokesman, Baghdad experienced more attacks from car bombs and improvised explosive devices than at any other time this year. In the last five days, 14 U.S. soldiers have died in Baghdad, numbers that haven't been seen in the city since the 2003 invasion. ABC's local Iraqi staff tell us there are an increasing number of neighborhoods they no longer dare to visit. The U.S. military said the reason for the increased casualty rate is that U.S. troops are now aggressively engaging the enemy, and they expected some push back. When extra U.S. troops first arrived in August, they concentrated on Sunni areas and had considerable success in restoring peace. But now that they have moved into Shiite areas, the resistance has increased. Compounding the problem for the United States is the uneven state of readiness in the Iraqi security forces. With 15,000 U.S. troops in Baghdad, a city of 5 million, the Americans need Iraqi forces to back them up and keep the peace in neighborhoods as they move on to new areas. In some cases, the Iraqi police simply don't turn up for work. But even worse is the involvement of some police officers with the death squads that have terrorized the capital for months. On Wednesday an entire police brigade from western Baghdad was suspended from duty because of its connections to death squads. For ordinary Iraqis, life has become ever more difficult. Many women are now afraid to leave their homes to go shopping, children are kept indoors to play, men sleep with guns next to their beds -- if they can sleep at all. The physical violence is horrific, but even more widespread is the psychological damage afflicting the entire city, which sees its hope for an end to the violence gradually ebbing away. The U.S. military said the situation in Baghdad would probably get worse before it gets better, and Iraqi citizens wonder how long they can stay alive before their lives improve.

Disproportionate response?

Steven den Beste has an interesting essay discussing guerilla warfare and disproportionate response.

IMHO Israel botched this war, but that's not the question I wanted to address in this discussion. The question I began with was, why did so many people demand "proportionate" responses from Israel, and condemn Israel's bombing campaign as being "disproportionate"?

It's because Israel refused to play the game. Israel opened up an offensive which ran at a logistically unsustainable rate for Hezbollah, which Hezbollah could not avoid fighting. The code word "proportionate" really meant, "Israel, you have to limit yourself to fighting at a level that Hezbollah can sustain. Otherwise it's just not fair!"

Recommended.

UN-neutral

Lori Lowenthal Marcus, in the current edition of The Weely Standard, describes some disturbing actions by UNIFIL during the recent Israel-Hezbollah conflict that are decidedly not neutral.

UNIFIL--the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, a nearly 2,000-man blue-helmet contingent that has been present on the Lebanon-Israel border since 1978--is officially neutral. Yet, throughout the recent war, it posted on its website for all to see precise information about the movements of Israeli Defense Forces soldiers and the nature of their weaponry and materiel, even specifying the placement of IDF safety structures within hours of their construction. New information was sometimes only 30 minutes old when it was posted, and never more than 24 hours old.

Meanwhile, UNIFIL posted not a single item of specific intelligence regarding Hezbollah forces. Statements on the order of Hezbollah "fired rockets in large numbers from various locations" and Hezbollah's rockets "were fired in significantly larger numbers from various locations" are as precise as its coverage of the other side ever got.

Go read the whole thing.

Loser

When it comes to the most recent Israel-Hezbollah conflict, Arab writers are beginning to declare that Hezbollah did not win, after all.

By controlling the flow of information from Lebanon throughout the conflict, and help from all those who disagree with U.S. policies for different reasons, Hezbollah may have won the information war in the West. In Lebanon, the Middle East and the broader Muslim space, however, the picture is rather different.

Go read the whole thing (it's in the extended entry, below).

Hezbollah Didn't Win
Arab writers are beginning to lift the veil on what really happened in Lebanon.

BY AMIR TAHERI
Friday, August 25, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDT

The way much of the Western media tells the story, Hezbollah won a great victory against Israel and the U.S., healed the Sunni-Shiite rift, and boosted the Iranian mullahs' claim to leadership of the Muslim world. Portraits of Hassan Nasrallah, the junior mullah who leads the Lebanese branch of this pan-Shiite movement, have adorned magazine covers in the West, hammering in the message that this child of the Khomeinist revolution is the new hero of the mythical "Arab Street."

Probably because he watches a lot of CNN, Iran's "Supreme Guide," Ali Khamenei, also believes in "a divine victory." Last week he asked 205 members of his Islamic Majlis to send Mr. Nasrallah a message, congratulating him for his "wise and far-sighted leadership of the Ummah that produced the great victory in Lebanon."

By controlling the flow of information from Lebanon throughout the conflict, and help from all those who disagree with U.S. policies for different reasons, Hezbollah may have won the information war in the West. In Lebanon, the Middle East and the broader Muslim space, however, the picture is rather different.

---

Let us start with Lebanon.

Immediately after the U.N.-ordained ceasefire started, Hezbollah organized a series of firework shows, accompanied by the distribution of fruits and sweets, to celebrate its victory. Most Lebanese, however, finding the exercise indecent, stayed away. The largest "victory march" in south Beirut, Hezbollah's stronghold, attracted just a few hundred people.

Initially Hezbollah had hesitated between declaring victory and going into mourning for its "martyrs." The latter course would have been more in harmony with Shiite traditions centered on the cult of Imam Hussain's martyrdom in 680 A.D. Some members of Hezbollah wished to play the martyrdom card so that they could accuse Israel, and through it the U.S., of war crimes. They knew that it was easier for Shiites, brought up in a culture of eternal victimhood, to cry over an imagined calamity than laugh in the joy of a claimed victory.

Politically, however, Hezbollah had to declare victory for a simple reason: It had to pretend that the death and desolation it had provoked had been worth it. A claim of victory was Hezbollah's shield against criticism of a strategy that had led Lebanon into war without the knowledge of its government and people. Mr. Nasrallah alluded to this in television appearances, calling on those who criticized him for having triggered the war to shut up because "a great strategic victory" had been won.

The tactic worked for a day or two. However, it did not silence the critics, who have become louder in recent days. The leaders of the March 14 movement, which has a majority in the Lebanese Parliament and government, have demanded an investigation into the circumstances that led to the war, a roundabout way of accusing Hezbollah of having provoked the tragedy. Prime Minister Fuad Siniora has made it clear that he would not allow Hezbollah to continue as a state within the state. Even Michel Aoun, a maverick Christian leader and tactical ally of Hezbollah, has called for the Shiite militia to disband.

Mr. Nasrallah followed his claim of victory with what is known as the "Green Flood"(Al-sayl al-akhdhar). This refers to the massive amounts of crisp U.S. dollar notes that Hezbollah is distributing among Shiites in Beirut and the south. The dollars from Iran are ferried to Beirut via Syria and distributed through networks of militants. Anyone who can prove that his home was damaged in the war receives $12,000, a tidy sum in wartorn Lebanon.

---

The Green Flood has been unleashed to silence criticism of Mr. Nasrallah and his masters in Tehran. But the trick does not seem to be working. "If Hezbollah won a victory, it was a Pyrrhic one," says Walid Abi-Mershed, a leading Lebanese columnist. "They made Lebanon pay too high a price--for which they must be held accountable."

Hezbollah is also criticized from within the Lebanese Shiite community, which accounts for some 40% of the population. Sayyed Ali al-Amin, the grand old man of Lebanese Shiism, has broken years of silence to criticize Hezbollah for provoking the war, and called for its disarmament. In an interview granted to the Beirut An-Nahar, he rejected the claim that Hezbollah represented the whole of the Shiite community. "I don't believe Hezbollah asked the Shiite community what they thought about [starting the] war," Mr. al-Amin said. "The fact that the masses [of Shiites] fled from the south is proof that they rejected the war. The Shiite community never gave anyone the right to wage war in its name."

There were even sharper attacks. Mona Fayed, a prominent Shiite academic in Beirut, wrote an article also published by An-Nahar last week. She asks: Who is a Shiite in Lebanon today? She provides a sarcastic answer: A Shiite is he who takes his instructions from Iran, terrorizes fellow believers into silence, and leads the nation into catastrophe without consulting anyone. Another academic, Zubair Abboud, writing in Elaph, a popular Arabic-language online newspaper, attacks Hezbollah as "one of the worst things to happen to Arabs in a long time." He accuses Mr. Nasrallah of risking Lebanon's existence in the service of Iran's regional ambitions.

Before he provoked the war, Mr. Nasrallah faced growing criticism not only from the Shiite community, but also from within Hezbollah. Some in the political wing expressed dissatisfaction with his overreliance on the movement's military and security apparatus. Speaking on condition of anonymity, they described Mr. Nasrallah's style as "Stalinist" and pointed to the fact that the party's leadership council (shura) has not held a full session in five years. Mr. Nasrallah took all the major decisions after clearing them with his Iranian and Syrian contacts, and made sure that, on official visits to Tehran, he alone would meet Iran's "Supreme Guide," Ali Khamenei.

Mr. Nasrallah justified his style by claiming that involving too many people in decision-making could allow "the Zionist enemy" to infiltrate the movement. Once he had received the Iranian green light to provoke the war, Mr. Nasrallah acted without informing even the two Hezbollah ministers in the Siniora cabinet or the 12 Hezbollah members of the Lebanese Parliament.

Mr. Nasrallah was also criticized for his acknowledgement of Ali Khamenei as Marjaa al-Taqlid (Source of Emulation), the highest theological authority in Shiism. Highlighting his bay'aah (allegiance), Mr. Nasrallah kisses the man's hand each time they meet. Many Lebanese Shiites resent this because Mr. Khamenei, a powerful politician but a lightweight in theological terms, is not recognized as Marjaa al-Taqlid in Iran itself. The overwhelming majority of Lebanese Shiites regard Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, in Iraq, or Ayatollah Muhammad-Hussein Fadhlallah, in Beirut, as their "Source of Emulation."

Some Lebanese Shiites also question Mr. Nasrallah's strategy of opposing Prime Minister Siniora's "Project for Peace," and instead advancing an Iranian-backed "Project of Defiance." The coalition led by Mr. Siniora wants to build Lebanon into a haven of peace in the heart of a turbulent region. His critics dismiss this as a plan "to create a larger Monaco." Mr. Nasrallah's "Project of Defiance," however, is aimed at turning Lebanon into the frontline of Iranian defenses in a war of civilizations between Islam (led by Tehran) and the "infidel," under American leadership. "The choice is between the beach and the bunker," says Lebanese scholar Nadim Shehadeh. There is evidence that a majority of Lebanese Shiites would prefer the beach.

---

There was a time when Shiites represented an underclass of dirt-poor peasants in the south and lumpen elements in Beirut. Over the past 30 years, however, that picture has changed. Money sent from Shiite immigrants in West Africa (where they dominate the diamond trade), and in the U.S. (especially Michigan), has helped create a prosperous middle class of Shiites more interested in the good life than martyrdom à la Imam Hussain. This new Shiite bourgeoisie dreams of a place in the mainstream of Lebanese politics and hopes to use the community's demographic advantage as a springboard for national leadership. Hezbollah, unless it ceases to be an instrument of Iranian policies, cannot realize that dream.

The list of names of those who never endorsed Hezbollah, or who broke with it after its Iranian connections became too apparent, reads like a Who's Who of Lebanese Shiism. It includes, apart from the al-Amins, families such as the al-As'ad, the Osseiran, the al-Khalil, the Hamadah, the Murtadha, the Sharafeddin, the Fadhlallah, the Mussawis, the Hussainis, the Shamsuddin and the Ata'allahs.

Far from representing the Lebanese national consensus, Hezbollah is a sectarian group backed by a militia that is trained, armed and controlled by Iran. In the words of Hossein Shariatmadari, editor of the Iranian daily Kayhan, "Hezbollah is 'Iran in Lebanon.' " In the 2004 municipal elections, Hezbollah won some 40% of the votes in the Shiite areas, the rest going to its rival Amal (Hope) movement and independent candidates. In last year's general election, Hezbollah won only 12 of the 27 seats allocated to Shiites in the 128-seat National Assembly--despite making alliances with Christian and Druze parties and spending vast sums of Iranian money to buy votes.

Hezbollah's position is no more secure in the broader Arab world, where it is seen as an Iranian tool rather than as the vanguard of a new Nahdha (Awakening), as the Western media claim. To be sure, it is still powerful because it has guns, money and support from Iran, Syria and Hate America International Inc. But the list of prominent Arab writers, both Shiite and Sunni, who have exposed Hezbollah for what it is--a Khomeinist Trojan horse--would be too long for a single article. They are beginning to lift the veil and reveal what really happened in Lebanon.

Having lost more than 500 of its fighters, and with almost all of its medium-range missiles destroyed, Hezbollah may find it hard to sustain its claim of victory. "Hezbollah won the propaganda war because many in the West wanted it to win as a means of settling score with the United States," says Egyptian columnist Ali al-Ibrahim. "But the Arabs have become wise enough to know TV victory from real victory."

Mr. Taheri is author of "L'Irak: Le Dessous Des Cartes" (Editions Complexe, 2002).

[Used with permission from OpinionJournal.com, a web site from Dow Jones & Company, Inc.]

The first battle of the fourth world war

Script writer Dan Gordon, who served as a captain in the Israel Defense Force reserves during this latest conflict with Hezbollah, has written a very interesting essay at The American Thinker about this particular fight and future ones to come. And he calls them like he sees them.

Contrary to what is now the accepted wisdom in the media, Hezb’allah in its recent offensive against Israel neither “badly bloodied the Israel Defense Force,� nor “fought it to a standstill� in Southern Lebanon. In fact, the opposite is the case. By any legitimate measure Hezb’allah was handed a resounding military defeat by the IDF in the recent fighting, and while the cancer that is Hezb’allah was not cured by Israel’s soldiers, it was put into remission.

Hezb’allah is not your father’s terrorist organization. This is not a group of loosely affiliated cells of would-be hijackers or suicide bombers. Hezb’allah is a terrorist army, trained like an army, organized like an army, funded and equipped like an army, with one glaring difference. The main use of its arsenal was terror aimed at Israel’s civilian population while hiding behind Lebanon’s civilian population. Its intent was to cause maximum civilian casualties amongst both. This was not by accident. This was by design.

There is so much more. Highly recommended.

The next war of the world

Wretchard, over at the Belmont Club has a good post up about Niall Feguson's essay, 'The Next War of the World'.

The three factors which Ferguson believes produced the 20th century wars which killed 170 million people -- 1 person in 22 -- were "ethnic disintegration, economic volatility, and empires in decline": the three E's. Often these factors worked in concert. As 20th century 'empires' collapsed they uncorked ethnic tensions which had heretofore lain dormant. These rapid changes were often accompanied by economic upheavals. The result, if not war, were its immediate precursors. The three E's started the most destructive conflicts in the history of the world.

He goes on to point out these same indicators are present in the Middle East now, and then discusses the roles that empire-seekers like Iran and France (in these cases they have the desire but not the power to become empires) are now taking in the world politic. And America (which does have the power) fervently seeks to avoid becoming an empire.

France and Iran, to name just two powers, may have the appetite for empire but not the teeth. And America by contrast and despite Niall Ferguson's longing for a strong hand in the world, may have the teeth but not the appetite. If the European Union project could [be]called putting a French jockey atop a German horse, the attempt to create an "international" world order might be described as a scheme to harness American muscle to a transnational agenda. Unfortunately and to the everlasting resentment of internationalists, the US refused to put its economy and military at the service of its environmental, cultural and political projects.

And because of these factors, and others, World War IV may well be in the offing -- and it will begin in the Middle East.

Recommended reading.

First-hand reporting -- Israel

Michael Totten is in Israel and is reporting from inside Hezbollah's Free Fire Zone. While he was talking to a couple of IDF spokesmen, one mentioned this little-known fact about the beginning of the conflict:

“Hardly any journalists have mentioned this,” Dan said. “But at the very beginning of this thing, when Hezbollah captured our soldiers, they also tried to invade, conquer, and hold the town of Metulla along with two other towns. And they were repulsed.”

Clearly an act of war. No ambiguity in that, is there?

There are several photos included in the report. Go read the whole thing.