TROOP SURGE WAVE IGNORED BY MSM

Crossposted ANewtOne 

Big battle, small news
Mainstream media virtually ignore the major U.S. push in Iraq

By Jack Kelly, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette


Imagine it’s June 7, 1944, the day after the D-Day invasion. You pick up your newspaper.
There’s no mention of Normandy on the front page, and only a brief reference to
it in a roundup story on an inside page.

The biggest battle since the invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein’s regime is under
way in Iraq. It’s outcome could determine whether the war is won or lost. But our
news media have paid less attention to it than to Paris Hilton’s legal troubles.


The heart of the offensive is Operation Arrowhead Ripper, in Diyala province northeast
of Baghdad, involving some 8,000 American and 2,000 Iraqi troops.


Many members of al-Qaida fled from Baghdad to Diyala, which borders on Iran,
when the U.S. troop surge began in January. There are thought to be between
1,000 and 2,000 hard-core al-Qaida fighters in Diyala, mostly in the provincial capital of Baquba.


“They are ready for us,” said former special forces soldier Michael Yon, now a
freelance journalist embedded with the U.S. troops. “Giant bombs are buried in
the roads. Snipers have chiseled holes in walls so they can shoot not from roofs or windows, but from deep inside buildings, where we cannot see the flash or hear the shots … Car bombs are already assembled. Suicide vests are prepared.”


It’s no coincidence that Arrowhead Ripper began within days of the arrival in
Baghdad of the fifth and final brigade of the troop surge.


“The U.S. ability to shift 10,000 coalition soldiers into a major operation
outside Baghdad in the midst of a major security crackdown is the mark of
significant operational flexibility,” said STRATFOR, a private intelligence
service. “This flexibility will allow the United States to keep pressure on
the jihadists and thus impede their ability to plan complex operations.”


Chiefly because of a shortage of troops, American offensives in the past have
tended just to push insurgents from one part of Iraq to another. Arrowhead Ripper is different.


“The idea this time is not to chase al-Qaida out, but to trap and kill them head on,
or in ambushes or while they sleep,” Mr. Yon said.


“The city is cordoned, neighborhoods are identified as friendly
or enemy territory, the neighborhoods are then segmented and forces
move in,” wrote Bill Roggio in his invaluable blog, Fourth Rail. “The
combat operations are then immediately followed by humanitarian and reconstruction projects.”


Simultaneous offensives are being conducted in another insurgents’ rat’s nest,
Babil province southwest of Baghdad, and in Baghdad neighborhoods where coalition
soldiers in the past have been reluctant to go.


Simultaneous offensives are the best way to gain decisive victory over a numerically
inferior force, because they prevent the enemy from shifting forces from one front
to another. The Union did not prevail in our Civil War until Grant attacked in
the East at the same time as Sherman attacked in the West.


Our soldiers are being assisted by former insurgents who have turned against
al-Qaida. Unlike the Anbar Salvation Council on which it is modeled, the Diyala
Salvation Front isn’t strong enough to take on al-Qaida by itself. But the intelligence
its members provide could prove invaluable to our troops.


You haven’t heard of the Anbar Salvation Council? Maybe that’s because our news media have tended to treat good news from Iraq as no news. When Thomas Ricks of The Washington Post reported last September that a senior Marine intelligence officer thought Anbar
province had been “lost politically,” his story attracted enormous attention from his
fellow journalists. Google lists 789,000 references to that one story.


The Anbar Salvation Council, a coalition of 41 Sunni tribes under the leadership of
Sheik Abdul Sattar al-Rishawi, has in very short order reversed that situation
(if it were ever as dire as Col. Pete Devlin imagined). Al-Qaida has been all but driven
out of Iraq’s “Wild West.” But Google lists only 114,000 mentions of the Anbar Salvation Council.
(Paris Hilton has nearly 76 million mentions.)


The Anbar Salvation Council model is spreading. The Diyala Salvation Front was formed in May. More than 10 tribes in Baghdad and its suburbs have banded together to fight al-Qaida,
USA Today reported Tuesday.

---

If Arrowhead Ripper succeeds, al-Qaida in Iraq will suffer a blow from which it may not recover.

---

“In Diyala, both the foreign jihadists and their domestic allies are beginning to feel cornered,
with few places left to hide,” STRATFOR said.


But if Arrowhead Ripper succeeds, you may not hear much about it. A U.S. victory would be too
embarrassing for those in the media who have staked their reputations on defeat.

EDITOR’S REMARKS: In a more reasonable time in our history, I would dismiss an article like this out of hand. Afterall, why wouldn’t the MSM not want us to win?

Well, it is very clear why.

The mainstream media in this country is in the iron grip of the left wing and America’s victory is their defeat. It really is that simple.

If word gets out (and it eventually has to) that we have turned the tide in Iraq and have the terrorists on the run (like the yellow dog cowards they are), the backlash against the defeatocrats will be nothing short of epic.

In 2006, the libtards took the house and senate almost exclusively on the back of unease about the Iraq war. Breaking news of a huge coalition comeback will re-fan the flames of support for the war and cause a surge in patriotic optimism that will overwhelm the Democrats in an election year Tsunami.

The beginning of the end for the Dems could very well be the General’s report in September. A small spark of hope can become a raging inferno is very short order. Pessimism about this war has acted like a big boulder around the neck of the entire country, dragging down confidence on all other issues.

A little good news for America is a whole lot of bad news for the Democratic party.

Filed under: 411, al-Qaida, Iraq, MSM, News, Support The Troops, War, War On Terror

Iraqi Officials Discourage U.S. Pullout

WASHINGTON (AP) — Worried Congress’ support for Iraq is deteriorating rapidly, Baghdad dispatched senior officials to Capitol Hill this week to warn members one-on-one that pulling out U.S. troops would have disastrous consequences.

The lobbying push targeted Republicans and Democrats alike, but focused primarily on those considered influential on the war debate. On Thursday, hours before the House voted to limit funds for the war, Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Barham Saleh met with more than 30 House Republicans and more than a half-dozen senators, including Sens. Harry Reid, D-Nev., John Warner, R-Va., and Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y.

Read more here: hosted.ap.org

Filed under: american politics, Iraq, News, War On Terror

Al-Sadr calls for attacks on U.S. troops

“Al-Sadr calls for attacks on U.S. troops,” by Saad Abdul Kadir for Associated Press:

BAGHDAD – The renegade cleric Muqtada al-Sadr urged the Iraqi army and police to stop cooperating with the United States and told his guerrilla fighters to concentrate on pushing American forces out of the country, according to a statement issued Sunday.

The statement, stamped with al-Sadr’s official seal, was distributed in the Shiite holy city of Najaf on Sunday — a day before a large demonstration there, called for by al-Sadr, to mark the fourth anniversary of the fall of Baghdad.

“You, the Iraqi army and police forces, don’t walk alongside the occupiers, because they are your archenemy,” the statement said. Its authenticity could not be verified.

In the statement, al-Sadr — who commands an enormous following among Iraq’s majority Shiites and has close allies in the Shiite-dominated government — also encouraged his followers to attack only American forces, not fellow Iraqis.

“God has ordered you to be patient in front of your enemy, and unify your efforts against them — not against the sons of Iraq,” the statement said, in an apparent reference to clashes between al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army fighters and Iraqi troops in Diwaniyah, south of Baghdad. “You have to protect and build Iraq.”

H/T Jihad Watch

Filed under: 411, Iraq, jihad, Support The Troops, War On Terror

Rant: There Are Issues That Should Not Be Up For Debate, Like Pulling Out of Iraq

I am beginning to think that the destruction of the Democratic Party is a really good thing, since liberals can have a perfectly good home annoying the rest of us who are sensible in the Republican Party.

I can’t even believe the idea of setting a timetable for Iraq is debatable. The only thing placing a time limit does is encourage insurgents to stock up on soldiers and arms, which is easier to do as we pull troops back slowly and inevitably, and then hit as hard as possible with the foreign aid they’re getting from countries liberals like such as Iran and Syria once the troops are gone. But you knew all that.

The issue is whether American Constitutionalism is meant to handle as radical a party as the Democrats are. This is an issue which I can’t really figure out, because fighting – which the Right has done since the Culture Wars began – has done nothing but produce consistent losses. And I’m not saying we shouldn’t fight: it’s just that the radicals, and that’s what the Democratic party is right now, given that their stances mean “no ability to conduct a foreign policy whatsoever,” shouldn’t have this much power over public opinion. And public opinion is everything in politics, and we’ve lost this battle big time when voters can be so easily swayed.

The main reason why I’m writing is because I firmly believe that while all of us are well-educated, we’ve been miseducated. We have to do something to get the schools back as conservatives, and teach people how to dissent without threatening the lives of our troops, our ability to conduct a foreign policy, and our security generally. It’s OK to be liberal – but when the Democrats insist on a timetable, that’s not being liberal, that’s pure demagoguery that’s going to result in more Iraqis killed and our ability to conduct policy destroyed.

The biggest problem with most liberals is that I can clearly see where they came from in my generation: they’re “me, me, me” for the most part. Their morals are purposely based on a perfect world that can’t be achieved, so that way they can say no one is moral. They don’t care about logical consistency – ask them how exactly environmentalism, identity politics, feminism, abortion rights, social justice and big government add up – the answer is they don’t, they’re just a response to our heritage in both its secular and sacred manifestations that is sentiment-driven more than an actual ideology. And you know exactly where I’m going: all this is a product of the fact we haven’t taught people properly. We coddle and cater to self-esteem, and so decadence is what we get.

We need to teach the value of citizenship in our schools, and not frame it in terms of “rights,” which encourage the self-absorption that is destroying us. We need to teach it as concern for each other. If the Democrats had any real concern for the safety of Americans now and in the future, they would not pursue this timetable. They’re gambling with my life and yours and everyone else who is a potential victim of terrorism, not to mention the Iraqis who are victims of insurgents daily, in order to please people like Cindy Sheehan (note that our troops, for the most part, are very much for doing the best they can for Iraq). I don’t know that I accept their existence as a party any longer: Liberals, please consider coming to the Republican party, as long as you’re not fanatical and anarchist. I’ll gladly take one or two for higher taxes in my party as long as they don’t want me dead for votes, which is what the Democratic party seems to want right now.

Powered by ScribeFire.

Filed under: anti-americanism, Democrats, Double Standards, Iraq, liberal agenda, National Security, Support The Troops, Terrorist, War On Terror

Bleak and Thoughtful About Iraq? How About Positive, But Not Artificially Pumped

This book sounds good, but I don’t really want to read it.

What I want to hear is not merely that we’re doing the “noble” thing in Iraq. I want to hear that this is going to work, and truth be told, I think it is – the second we had that election and everyone had those purple thumbs and were thrilled to be voting despite the fact they could have been massacred – that was when the terrorists could get bloody and spectacular and still, they were going to lose.

But while that’s what I think, the truth is that the “noble” and the “beautiful” – well, those things aren’t always tied to the “effective.” Right now I think we’re getting a big kick out of “300″ because we just want to fall in love with the idea of having guts for the sake of our liberty, no matter how awfully things might end up. And I’m glad we’re falling in love with what is “noble,” but I’m especially glad about it as things seem to be going better over there.

One thing I’m noticing is that while we don’t need to get all gung-ho for things to work, we don’t need exact details either to see that things are better. There really is a “common sense” that we have – when we see something as valuable, and worth fighting for, we can pick up on the little things that demonstrate the good we’re doing, and help us eliminate the bad. Things are better in Iraq because of the new strategy, which really should have been the old one: go into the neighborhood, and do things for individuals, and let them know that all of us are human, not monsters who exist to destroy everything or fighters who exist only to kill those monsters or bureaucrats who live in a realm of policy debates and conferences.

Powered by ScribeFire.

Filed under: foreign policy, Iraq, Support The Troops, War On Terror

“Finish The Job” By Miles Gray

By Miles Gray – I have been against the action in Iraq from day one. However, now that we have created a mess in that country, it is our responsibility to solve the problems we created.

If we don’t, then the haven for terrorists ( that didn’t exist before) will come into being.

While it is not likely that the religious factions will ever unify, one or the other will become dominant. Whether that faction be friendly to us is yet to be seen.

Tiny Earp should understand that the God of Islam is the same God we worship!

The Jews often seem anxious to prove that Christ was only a good man nothing else. At least Islam recognizes Christ as a prophet of God and that Mohammed is the lastest prophet of God and the one to now be followed.

As for John Q. Adams,any man who has fought for this country understands exactly what his words mean. Maybe its time to shake up Washington and congress.

Retyped as printed from the Odessa American News paper dated Sunday, March 18, 2007

To: editor, Odessa American, P.O. Box 2952, Odessa, Texas 79760-2952. Letters may be faxed to 432-333-7742. E-mailed: oaletters@link.freedom.com

All submissions to the paper must include the author’s name, address, and phone number.

Thanks Di

Filed under: Christian, conservative, foreign policy, Iraq, Jesus, Military, Muslim, Terrorist, War On Terror

Toxic Gas Attacks In Iraq

At least eight people were killed and hundreds injured when suicide bombers launched toxic gas attacks in Iraq.

Two police officers were among the dead and around 350 people injured by the chlorine gas.

Two dumper trucks were blown-up within 40 minutes of each other in Falluja.

In one, a bomber detonated his truck which contained a 900-litre chlorine tank rigged with explosives.

Read more here: news.sky.com

Filed under: Iran, Iraq, jihad, News, Terrorist, Uncategorized, War On Terror