State of Iraq - What The Surge Hath Wrought

NYT reporter, Dexter Filkins, returns to Iraq for the first time since the height of sectarian violence in 2006, the year before General Petraeus implemented the counterinsurgency strategy. He is stunned at what he finds. Ironically, it can be summed up as hope and change.
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This from Mr. Filkins writing in the NYT:

At first, I didn’t recognize the place.

On Karada Mariam, a street that runs over the Tigris River toward the Green Zone, the Serwan and the Zamboor, two kebab places blown up by suicide bombers in 2006, were crammed with customers. Farther up the street was Pizza Napoli, the Italian place shut down in 2006; it, too, was open for business. And I’d forgotten altogether about Abu Nashwan’s Wine Shop, boarded up when the black-suited militiamen of the Mahdi Army had threatened to kill its owners. There it was, flung open to the world.

Two years ago, when I last stayed in Baghdad, Karada Mariam was like the whole of the city: shuttered, shattered, broken and dead.

Abu Nawas Park — I didn’t recognize that, either. By the time I had left the country in August 2006, the two-mile stretch of riverside park was a grim, spooky, deserted place, a symbol for the dying city that Baghdad had become.

These days, the same park is filled with people: families with children, women in jeans, women walking alone. Even the nighttime, when Iraqis used to cower inside their homes, no longer scares them. I can hear their laughter wafting from the park. At sundown the other day, I had to weave my way through perhaps 2,000 people. It was an astonishing, beautiful scene — impossible, incomprehensible, only months ago.

When I left Baghdad two years ago, the nation’s social fabric seemed too shredded to ever come together again. The very worst had lost its power to shock. To return now is to be jarred in the oddest way possible: by the normal, by the pleasant, even by hope. The questions are jarring, too. Is it really different now? Is this something like peace or victory? And, if so, for whom: the Americans or the Iraqis?

. . . When I left Iraq in the summer of 2006, after living three and a half years here following the collapse of Saddam Hussein’s regime, I believed that evil had triumphed, and that it would be many years before it might be stopped. Iraq, filled with so many people living so close together, nurturing dark and unknowable grievances, seemed destined for a ghastly unraveling.

And now, in the late summer of 2008, comes the calm. Violence has dropped by as much as 90 percent. A handful of the five million Iraqis who fled their homes — one-sixth of all Iraqis — are beginning to return. The mornings, once punctuated by the sounds of exploding bombs, are still. Is it possible that the rage, the thirst for revenge, the sectarian furies, have begun to fade? That Iraqis have been exhausted and frightened by what they have seen?

“We are normal people, ordinary people, like people everywhere,” Aziz al-Saiedi said to me the other day, as we sat on a park bench in Sadr City, only recently freed from the grip of the Mahdi Army. The park was just a small patch of bare ground with a couple of swing sets; it didn’t even have a name, yet it was filled to the bursting. “We want what everyone else wants in this world,” he said.

. . . Everything here seems to be standing on its head. Propaganda posters, which used to celebrate the deaths of American soldiers, now call on Iraqis to turn over the triggermen of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia and the Mahdi Army. “THERE IS NOWHERE FOR YOU TO HIDE,” a billboard warns in Arabic, displaying a set of peering, knowing eyes. I saw one such poster in Adamiyah, a Sunni neighborhood that two years ago was under the complete control of Al Qaeda. Sunni insurgents — guys who were willing to take on the Qaeda gunmen — are now on the American payroll, keeping the peace at ragtag little checkpoints for $300 a month.

In Sadr City, the small brick building that served as the Mahdi Army’s headquarters still stands. But not 50 feet away, a freshly built Iraqi Army post towers above it now. Next to the army post, perhaps to heighten the insult to the militia, the Iraqi government has begun installing a new sewer network, something this impoverished and overcrowded ghetto sorely needs. “Wanted” posters adorn the blast walls there, too, imploring the locals to turn in the once-powerful militia leaders.

Inside the Sadr Bureau, as it’s called, the ex-militia gunmen speak in chastened tones about moving on, maybe finding other work, maybe even transforming their once ferocious army into a social welfare organization. I didn’t see any guns.

“Please don’t print my name in your newspaper,” one former Mahdi Army commander asked me with a sheepish look. “I’m wanted by the government.”

As for the Americans, they are still here, of course, but standing ever more in the background.

. . . The other day I rode in a helicopter to Ramadi, the capital of Anbar Province, the Wyoming-size slice of desert west of Baghdad. Two years ago, 30 marines and soldiers were dying there every month. In 2005, Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia declared Anbar the seat of its “caliphate.” Since then, violence in Anbar has plummeted. Al Qaeda has been decimated. I was coming in for a ceremony, unimaginable until recently, to mark the handover of responsibility for security to the Iraqi Army and police.

Standing in the middle of the downtown, I found myself disoriented. I had been here before — I was certain — but still I couldn’t recognize the place. Two summers ago, when I’d last been in Ramadi, the downtown lay in ruins. Only one building stood then, the Anbar provincial government center, and the Americans were holding onto it at all cost. For hundreds of yards in every direction, everything was destroyed; streets, buildings, cars, even the rubble had been ground to dust. Ramadi looked like Dresden, or Grozny, or some other obliterated city. Insurgents attacked every day.

And then, suddenly, I realized it: I was standing in front of the government center itself. It was sporting a fresh concrete facade, which had been painted off-white with brownish trim. Over the entrance hung a giant official seal of Anbar Province. The road where I stood had been recently paved; it was black and smooth. The rubble had been cleared away. American marines were walking about, without helmets or flak jackets or even guns.

In the crowd, I saw a face I recognized. It was Mowaffak al-Rubaie, Iraq’s national security advisor. It had been a long time since I’d seen him. Mr. Rubaie is a warm, garrulous man, a neurologist who spent years in London before returning to Iraq. But he is also a Shiite, and a member of Iraq’s Shiite-led government, which, in 2005 and 2006, was accused of carrying out widespread atrocities against Iraq’s Sunnis. Anbar Province is almost entirely Sunni.

As Mr. Rubaie made his way through the crowd, I noticed he was holding hands with another Iraqi man, a traditional Arab gesture of friendship and trust. It was Brig. Gen. Murdi Moshhen al-Dulaimi, the Iraqi Army officer taking control of the province — a Sunni. The sun was blinding, but Mr. Rubaie was wearing sunglasses, and finally he spotted me.

“What on earth are you doing here?” he asked over the crowd.

I might have asked him the same thing.

. . . In August, before I came back to Iraq, I visited Gen. Ray Odierno in his office at the Pentagon. As the deputy commander in Iraq from late 2006 to early 2008, General Odierno had helped execute the buildup of American troops that has helped quell the violence. When we met, he was preparing to assume command of the American forces here, taking over for Gen. David H. Petraeus.

General Odierno, an enormous, imposing man, has come a long way in Iraq.

. . . When he returned to Iraq in late 2006, General Odierno concluded that the American project in Iraq was headed for defeat. The American officers whom he was replacing had reached the same conclusion. “I knew that if we continued the way that we were, then we were not going to be successful,” he said.

Hence the troop increase. At its most basic level, General Odierno explained, the premise of this “surge” was that ordinary Iraqis didn’t want the violence. That is, that the chaos in Iraq was being driven by small groups of killers, principally those of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, who, by murdering Shiite civilians in huge car and suicide bomb attacks, were driving ordinary Iraqis into the arms of Shiite deaths squads and the Mahdi Army. If that dynamic could be broken, ordinary Iraqis would stop relying on militias to protect them. Something approaching normalcy might return.

“We believed that the majority of the Iraqi people wanted to move forward, but you had these small groups that didn’t,” General Odierno said. “So we had to protect the people, and go after these groups.”

And so they did, with a series of offensives against the Qaeda insurgents in and around Baghdad in 2007 and then, earlier this year, in Basra and in Baghdad against the Mahdi Army. Along the way, the Americans got a huge break: The leaders of Iraq’s large Sunni tribes, which had included many insurgents, decided to stop opposing the Americans and join them against Al Qaeda. The Americans, seizing the opportunities, agreed to put many of the tribesmen, including many former insurgents, on the payroll.

The Sunni Awakening, as it is called, cascaded through Sunni areas across Iraq.

The result, now visible in the streets, is a calm unlike any Iraq has known in the five and a half years since the Americans arrived. Iraqi life is flowing back into the streets. The ordinary people, the “normal people,” as Mr. Aziz called them, have the upper hand, at least for now. . . .

Read the entire article. There is much more.

The forces arrayed against Iraq are significant. Iran has been beaten back - but only for the moment. Al Qaeda's defeat has been more significant, though it to could theoretically stage a come back. Corruption is endemic. Massive oil wealth is a blessing and a curse, increasing the wealth of the nation even as many eye a way to get their hands on an ill-gotten piece of the wealth. The Kurdish north is doing its best to take control of the oil fields near Kirkuk and to become a defacto separate country, threatening to tear Iraq apart.

Arrayed against those forces are a nation desperate to live in peace. It is a nation of intelligent and hardworking people with a history of intermixing between Sunni, Shia and Kurd. It is a nation that is hopeful of democracy to give it good and fair government. And Iraq still has a U.S. partner committed - for the moment - to seeing Iraq a success. Whatever the future may hold, for now, there is a hardwon peace.

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The Fierce Urgency of How

She's as good on the stump as she was in speaking to the Republican Convention. Obama gave her the opening by admitting on O'Reilly last night that the surge has been "wildly successful" - and then spinning it by saying that it had worked "beyond anyone's imagination." Underbelly exposed, the moosehuntress goes in to gut her kill while McCain enjoys the spectacle.



Obama and the left are nowhere close to figuring out how to deal with Sarah Palin.

They should already have gleaned by now the dangers of trying to go after her with vicious, ad hominem attacks. The poll numbers and the numbers from her VP speech - both of which exceed Obama's, came about because of the interest generated by all of the attacks on Gov. Palin. And when she didn't wilt and didn't play victim, the boomerang has already started - bigtime. Yet the left, as I have explained ad nauseum in prior posts, just can't stop themselves. Thus we have Gloria Steinam coming out the otherday pronouncing Palin the anti-Christess. We have NOW saying that Sarah Palin is a conservative man. And in probably the most offensive attack to date, Judith Warner writes in the NYT today an article entitled "The Mirrored Ceiling," all but calling Gov. Palin a whore. Here is some of the incredible vitriol heaped by Ms. Warner:

Why does this woman – who to some of us seems as fake as they can come, with her delicate infant son hauled out night after night under the klieg lights and her pregnant teenage daughter shamelessly instrumentalized for political purposes — deserve, to a unique extent among political women, to rank as so “real”?

The rest of the article is equally scandalous. The elite left are so narcissitic that anyone who is not of their circle and that does not hold their views is illegitimate. They are unable to fathom that conservatives are not as they have caricatured them. It is clear that Ms. Warner is of the elite left ilk.

But the Obama campaign itself does not know how to handle Gov. Palin. It was the Obama campaign, while outwardly staying above the ad hominem attacks, actually pushing the Eagleton meme through their surrogates in the MSM in the days leading up to her speech. Hot Air has the rest of the story. Obama tried to respond to Palin's attacks on his experience, but that portended to backfire. Obama's campaign, then officially, at least, decided to ignore Palin. There is too much interest in her for that. So now the latest is to try to turn McCain's attack on Obama - that he was a vacuous celebrity - back against Palin. That is sure to backfire. Obama invited the celebrity comparison with his messianic speeches, his claim to be the "One" we have "been waiting for," his claim that the seas would fall and his "I am a citizen of the world" speech to 200,000 screaming brautwurst eaters. Nothing Palin has done remotely smacks of such hubris or status seeking.

Given the excitement that Palin has ignited, Obama and the far left as a whole are in overdrive trying to figure out a way to stop her between now and November. Obama justified his campaign borrowing the phrase from MLK, the fierce urgency of now. And at the moment, he is in a brutal rear guard action trying to figure out how to save his candidacy. Call it the fierce urgency of how.

Update: The Fierce Urgency Of How - Part II

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Iraq Continues to Improve - But Why?

The success of the surge cannot be denied - only spun now. With security improving and with U.S. deaths now decreasing to their lowest monthly total since the war began, President Bush has announced that he is reducing the length of combat tours for soldiers deploying to Iraq from 15 months to 12 months. He also indicated that, as security conditions improves, he will begin drawing down more units. All of the additional combat brigades sent over as part of the surge have now redeployed from Iraq, leaving 140,000 soldiers in country, 10,000 more than prior to the surge. These additional forces are logistics.

July was the lowest month for casualties - 5 combat deaths and 8 non-combat deaths - recorded in Iraq since the start of the war. This tracks with ever reducing violence throughout Iraq that has fallen to levels not seen since 2004. To their credit, both the Washington Post and the NYT run their stories on this on page 1. Unfortunately, WaPo also takes the line that the security improvements are due in part to events unrelated to the surge - i.e., the good will of Sadr and the Awakening movements. To call that partisan and demonstrably false is an understatement.
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This from the Washington Post:

Five American troops died in July as a result of combat in Iraq, by far the lowest monthly U.S. death toll of the five-year war.

The number of Iraq-related American troop fatalities in July -- a total of 13 when noncombat deaths and the discovered bodies of two missing soldiers are included -- is a dramatic drop from just over a year ago, when more than 100 troops a month were confirmed dead for several months in a row.

In a brief statement at the White House early Thursday, President Bush suggested that the decreasing violence in Iraq would allow him to withdraw additional U.S. troops before he leaves office. He said that the top American commander in Iraq, Gen. David H. Petraeus, would make recommendations in September for "future reductions in our combat forces, as conditions permit."

"The progress is still reversible," Bush said he was told by top U.S. officials in Iraq. "But they report that there now appears to be a degree of durability to the gains we have made."

Bush struck a delicate rhetorical balance between asserting his view that sending additional troops to Iraq has been a success, while at the same time cautioning that withdrawing troops too rapidly could jeopardize security improvements.

. . . Starting Friday, Bush said, troop deployments in Iraq will shorten from 15 months to 12. The policy, first announced in April, applies to troops heading to Iraq but not those already stationed there.

The decline in American deaths highlights improvements in security that are widely attributed to three factors: a cease-fire by the country's largest Shiite militia, the decision of former Sunni insurgents to join with U.S. troops and the buildup of American forces. [emphasis added]

"It just feels so much safer than I ever thought it would," said Sgt. Daniel Ochoa, 26, of Highland Park, Calif., who is based in southern Baghdad. "We don't really go out anymore looking to go and fight the enemy. Things are stabilized, so now we're working more on helping the economy and getting people on their feet."

Despite the increased sense of security, deep-rooted tensions remain that continue to provoke violence. This week, more than 50 people were killed in a series of attacks related to a power struggle over control of the oil-rich and ethnically mixed city of Kirkuk in northern Iraq.

The situation grew more tense on Thursday when the Kurdish majority on the council of Tamim province, which includes Kirkuk, voted to join the neighboring Kurdish regional government.

The move is largely symbolic, because the Iraqi parliament would have to approve it, but it provoked denunciations by representatives of rival ethnic communities, who said they would fight to prevent the Kurds from taking over the city.

"The fires of Kirkuk will eat all Iraq's cities and even the Americans," said Hussein Ali al-Jubouri, the head of the largest Sunni Arab political bloc in Kirkuk.

. . . At military bases across Iraq, American soldiers have been paying close attention to the security situation and what it might mean for the timing of their return home.

"My soldiers ask me that every day: I heard a rumor they're reducing our deployment! Is it true?" said 1st Lt. Matthew Linton, 24, of Florida, N.Y., a platoon leader based in the once volatile Sadr City district of Baghdad. "Everybody wants to come home early."

Linton's troops spent Thursday distributing $2,500 grants to merchants in Sadr City's Jamila Market and chatting with the owner of a candy store.

"When we used to walk the streets in April, they were empty and we would be destroying buildings used by enemy positions," he said. "Now we walk the same streets that were covered in sewage and rubble and utter destruction, and they are vibrant and full of people.

"As the situation improves, it feels more like the race is almost finished," Linton said, "compared to you're in the middle of the race and you have a long way to go."

Read the entire article. As to the WaPo author's gratuitous attribution of the success in Iraq to events other than the surge, I would suggest reading Michael O'Hanlon's articulate assessment. That is the WaPo author inserting a pro-Obama political opinion into what is supposed to be a news article. I do hope Petraeus or some of our soldiers who have fought in Iraq so valiantly weigh in on this before the left can repeat their new myth so often it becomes accepted as reality. It is a tremendous disservice to our soldiers.

As to Kirkuk, I've written many times before that Kurdish seperatism and adventurism could well be the flashpoint for a true civil war in Iraq. The U.S. weighed in on this issue by supporting Turkey's incursions into the Kurdish north. That seemed to cow the Kurds somewhat, though clearly the underlying issues are divisive and still extant.

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Taheri On Obama's Perfidy & Naivity

Amir Taheri opines in the NY Sun today on Obama's world tour, providing some fascinating observations from his sources in Iraq and Europe. They track with what I have been saying since I started this blog - that the far left wants to declare Iraq illegitimate and a defeat for political gain. It is perfidy, partisanship and naivity writ on a grand scale. And in part, Taheri explores the hypocrisy and consequences inherent in Obama's call to leave Iraq in order to shore up Afghanistan with two combat brigades.
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This from Amir Taheri:

Termed a "learning" trip, Sen. Barack Obama's eight- day tour of eight nations in the Middle East and Europe turned out to be little more than a series of photo ops to enhance his international credentials.

"He looked like a man in a hurry," a source close to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said last week. "He was not interested in what we had to say."

Still, many Iraqis liked Obama's claim that the improved situation in Iraq owed to Iraqi efforts rather than the Gen. David Petraeus-led surge. In public and private comments, Obama tried to give the impression that the Iraqis would've achieved the same results even without the greater resources America has poured into the country since 2007.

In private, though, Iraqi officials admit that Obama's analysis is "way off the mark." Without the surge, the Sunni tribes wouldn't have switched sides to help flush out al Qaeda. And the strong US military presence enabled the new Iraqi army to defeat Iran-backed Shiite militias in Basra and Baghdad.

Nevertheless, in public at least, no Iraqi politician wants to appear more appreciative of American sacrifices than the man who may become the next US president.

Iraqis were most surprised by Obama's apparent readiness to throw away all the gains made in Iraq simply to prove that he'd been right in opposing the 2003 overthrow of Saddam Hussein. "He gave us the impression that the last thing he wanted was for Iraq to look anything like a success for the United States," a senior Iraqi official told me. "As far as he is concerned, this is Bush's war and must end in lack of success, if not actual defeat."

Even so, Obama knows that most Americans believe they're still at war with an enemy prepared to use terror against them. So he can't do what his antiwar base wants - declare an end to the War on Terror and the start of a period of love and peace in which "citizens of the world" build bridges between civilizations.

That's why Obama is trying to adopt Afghanistan as "his" war. He claims that Bush's focus on Iraq has left Afghanistan an orphan in need of love and attention. Even though US military strategy is to enable America to fight two major wars simultaneously, Obama seems to believe that only one war is possible at a time.

But what does that mean practically?

Obama says he wants to shift two brigades (some of his advisers say two battalions) from Iraq to Afghanistan. But where did that magical figure come from? From NATO, which has been calling on its members to provide more troops since 2006.

NATO wants the added troops mainly to improve the position of its reserves in Afghanistan. The alliance doesn't face an actual shortage of combat units - it's merely facing a rotation schedule that obliges some units to stay in the field for up to six weeks longer than is normal for NATO armies.

Overall, NATO hopes that its members will have no difficulty providing the 5,000 more troops it needs for a "surge." So there's no need for the US to abandon Iraq in order to help Afghanistan.

The immediate effect of Obama's plan to abandon Iraq and send more troops to Afghanistan is to ease pressure on other NATO members to make a greater contribution. Even in Paris, some critics think that President Nicolas Sarkozy should postpone sending more troops until after the US presidential election. "If President Obama can provide all the manpower needed in Afghanistan, there is no need for us to commit more troops," said a Sarkozy security adviser.

Obama's move would suit Sarkozy fine because he's reducing the size of the French army and closing more than 80 garrisons. Other Europeans would also be pleased. German Chancellor Angela Merkel will soon face a difficult general election in which her main rivals will be calling for an end to "the Afghan adventure."

Today, with the sole exception of Spain (where the mildly anti-American Socialist Party is in power), pro-US parties govern Europe. These parties feel pressure from the Bush administration to translate their pro-American claims into actual support for the Afghanistan war effort. By promising to shoulder the burden, Obama is letting the European allies off the hook.

. . . Having announced his strategy before embarking on his "listening tour," he couldn't be expected to change his mind simply because facts on the ground offered a different picture. . . .

Read the entire article. One of the things Taheri misses in the above is that Obama is the Chairmen of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee for Europe. While our problems in Afghanistan are NATO related, Obama has yet to hold a single hearing to find out why our NATO allies are not cooperating and to bring pressure on them to do more.

I could think of no man less qualified to be commander in chief than Obama. That belief is far from predicated on his lack of any military experience. It seems clear that his decision making will be guided by political expediency rather than principle. It seems clear that his decision making will always prioritize the political over military necessity or force protection. While he will no doubt make the American hating far left happy, what that translates into for those who have volunteered to served and defend this nation is dead U.S. soldiers.

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Michael O'Hanlon - Assessing Success In Iraq

At the American Prospect, the editors ask "how important was the surge?" This after Obama who, in order to suggest that his judgement in opposing the surge was not as grossly poor as in reality it was, has shown the even worse judgment in denigrating the importance of the surge, crediting the lions share of the success to the Anbar Awakening and Sadr's cease fire, as if both were unrelated to the surge. I've answered this question several times, but Michael O'Hanlon has the most articulate and accurate answer to date.

What was the most important factor in the dramatic turnaround in Iraq over the past year or so (a period during which violence rates have declined by at least 75 percent and about half of key legislative goals have been partially or fully satisfied, even if much remains to be done?) There is room for some debate in this matter, to be sure, but only so much. It seems incontrovertible to me that several major factors, including certainly the surge, were hugely important--and also synergistically important, in that the sum of effects was much greater than the sum of the parts.

Certainly the Sunni Anbar Awakening gets high marks. It was the first thing to happen in the last two years of major note. It brought much of the core of the insurgency into alliance with the United States and Iraqi government, and over time it spread to the Baghdad belts and increasingly to the north of Iraq.

However, it was the United States that organized the Awakening tribes into a coherent military and policing effort.

It was the United States, with Iraqi Security Forces, that cleared cities like Ramadi -- and unlike in past efforts, kept forces there afterwards to preserve the stability and keep extremists like al-Qaeda in Iraq out of the places from which they had been driven. It was the United States that sufficiently intimidated Muqtada al-Sadr into realizing a ceasefire better served his interests than would a renewal of battle. It was American and Iraqi security forces that, in larger numbers than before and with new operational guidelines and tactics, built blast barriers near markets, put up concrete dividers along sectarian fault lines in Baghdad, created joint security stations and started walking the streets to protect the Iraqi population, and conducted raids on insurgent safehouses and weapons caches at two to three times the rate of previous years (largely due to improved intelligence made possible by a safer, friendler, better protected population). And through all these combined efforts, it was largely the United States that was able to figure out which Iraqi commanders needed to be purged -- and that then put pressure on the Iraqi government to replace them.

On balance, many things were important, but the surge and the associated emphasis on better protection for the Iraqi population were crucial -- and absolutely necessary to the huge progress that has been made.

Yeah. What he said.

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Refocusing McCain's Message After The Maliki Embrace of Obama

PM Maliki undercut McCain's stance on Iraq by embracing Obama's call for short timelines. Obama, a man who narcissim and arrogance clearly outweighs his judgment, has given McCain an incredible gift by denigrating the surge and claiming, incredibly, that his own plan for withdraw might have had the same impact as the surge. In light of all this, McCain can still eviscerate Obama on the issue of judgement, he merely needs to make the focus of his arguments less about Iraq in particular and more about the larger challenges we face.
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I am not sure what game Iraq PM Maliki is playing by inserting himself into U.S. politics with his comments in Der Spiegel that, in essence, though unlcear, seem to be an embrace of a 16 month timetable for withdraw of all combat forces from Iraq. Whether or not this was a mistranslation is near meaningless as it has already had whatever impact it will in the U.S. Joshua Pundit speculates that this is an attempt by Maliki to play both ends against the middle in order to extract the maximum concessions from Pres. Bush in a high stakes game of chicken over the SOFA Agreement. It JP is correct, then Maliki has made a foolish move. He would do well to remember what happened to South Vietnman and how that country was treated by its neighbors and the the U.S. after the U.S. withdrew. If you don't recall the story, you can find it in the Arthur Hermann article here.

But Iraq is a sovereign and democratic country. If the elected government at any time asks for us to remove our troops, then out we should go, posthaste. That is not the central point of this post. The question is, how is McCain to regain his footing. The "time horizons for victory" versus "time tables for defeat" is still a valid argument. Even Obama admits that General Petraeus is strongly opposed to time lines as putting all of our gains in Iraq in danger. But because of Maliki, it no longer has the importance to make it alone the decisive issue.

We still have wars going on. There is still the war in Afghanistan. There is still the problem of Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Pakistan which is only going worse by the day - and which at the moment we are watching from the sidelines. There is still the problem of Iran, which could very easily become a major shooting war. Even if we finish Iraq in uncontested victory and depart that nation, we are still a nation at war.

While Maliki may have undercut McCain, Obama has provided the gift of all gifts - Kerryesque nuance on the surge. Specifically, Obama said that knowing what he knows now, he still would not vote for the surge. He is defending the indefensible. He does so by denigrating the success of the surge, he credits the Anbar Awakening and Sadr's ceasefire as the unforseeable keys to the success in Iraq and he posits that these two acts where unrelated to the U.S. actions in Iraq. Finally, he just throws up his arms saying who knew what would have happened had his plan been followed. I've spelled out the utter gaping holes in Obama's positions here.

Obama could not have given McCain more ammunition. McCain's message needs to transcend Iraq. He needs to shift the focus from 16 months or time horizons in Iraq to a combination of Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran and the Global War on Terror generally. The arguments will be the same, he merely needs to make them more global - and mine Obama's "nuance" for all it is worth.

As an aside, Americans are hardly a stupid people. Even as the entirity of the MSM has gone in the tank for Obama, the rest of America seems not to be falling in behind the MSM like lemmings. Amazingly, even as the MSM holds a wall to wall Obamathon, the Washington Post is reporting that McCain is significantly closing the gap in major battleground states. If Obama can't improve his numbers under these absolutely most favorable of conditions, he is going to have a lot of problems when the debates come around and McCain is able to finally press him eye to eye for the nation to watch.

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McCain, The Anbar Awakening, & Intellectual Honesty At MSNBC

McCain, in a statement yesterday, stated that the surge was responsible for the Anbar Awakening. Though the Anbar Awakening was solicited by the U.S. - and indeed, soliticing popular support is at the heart of counterinsurgency strategy - it actually got its start in September, 2006, three months before the formal adoption of the counterinsurgency strategy. In any event, the Anbar Awakening was fully supported by the surge and was, as part of the counterinsurgency, used as the model to spread throughout the rest of Iraq.

The left has been swarming on this one, claiming McCain does not know what he is talking about because the Awakening technically started before the surge. Joe Scarborough and former Democratic Senatorial candidate Harold Ford Jr. put this one in brutal perspective.



I may have to start watching Mr. Scarborough. (Video from Olbermann Watch)

Below

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Obama Would Rather Lose A War Than An Election

You may remember John McCain from when he was occaionaly covered in the news in the weeks prior to Obama's foreign tour. Here he is spelling out the character difference between he and Mr. Obama, whose ever changing positions on Iraq seem to have their motivation in partisan politics.

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Iraq Speech Part I: Obama Tosses Our Military Under The Bus To Defend His Poor Judgment (Updated)

Obama's latest ploy is to claim that his judgement in opposing the surge was not poor because:

1. No one could have foreseen the rise of the Anbar Awakening movements, and it was these movements that played a large role in the success we see today in Iraq.

2. No one could have foreseen the simultaneous "cease fire" by Sadr, an act taken apparently unilaterally and with no relationship to U.S. combat actions.

3. The two events above are what truly have led to security in Iraq, with the "surge" of U.S. forces being an ancillary factor.

[Update: The videos that were here are now replaced by quotes from the transcript. The videos became non-operational after RedLasso was forced to cease operations by a lawsuit - another MSM attack on bloggers and rights of fair use.]

This from the NYT Transcripts of the Obama's speech & Q&A session:

. . . With respect to the surge, you know, we don't know what would have happened if I -- if the plan that I put forward in January 2007 to put more pressure on the Iraqis to arrive at a political reconciliation, to begin a phased withdrawal, what would have happened had we pursued that strategy.

I am pleased that as a consequence of great effort by our troops, but also as a consequence of a shift in allegiances among the Sunni tribal leaders as well as the decision of the Sadr militias to stand down, that we've seen a quelling of the violence.

. . . Second question was how would I apportion the improvements in Iraq. I don't know how to put a numerical factor on that. There is no doubt that when we put in 30,000 American troops, here is no doubt that when we put in 30,000 American troops, who are dedicated, who are brave, and who bring extraordinary skill to their jobs, that they're going to make a difference.

I think the commanders on the ground themselves would -- would acknowledge that, had you continued to see Sunni leadership align itself with AQI, that we would be in a different situation right now. That if you continued to see ethnic cleansing in Baghdad or the Sadr militias continuing to engage in some of that activity and constant reprisals, that you'd still have some big problems there right now.

But I don't know how to put a numeric -- you know, a number to that.

Read the entire transcript. Just when one thinks that Obama has plumbed the depths of political cynicsm, he hits a new low. Obama's attempt to take away credit from U.S. forces and denigrate their achievement, their sacrifice and the brilliance of their command is the lowest he has gotten - so far. And to claim that no one could forsee what would have happened had we followed his plan to withdraw immediately in 2007 is just ridiculous.

As I wrote yesterday, on the day the surge was announced, al Qaeda controlled practically all of the Sunni provinces and Iran through its proxies had a stranglehold on the South. Just how hard is it to assess where Iraq would be today if we had not challenged those situations militarily? One need engage in no speculation to make such an assessment.

How does Obama think the Anbar Awakening started? This didn't come about magically. U.S. forces solicited it from its very inception. It actually coallesced in September, 2006 and was well known - even the NYT was writing about its success by April, 2007. Does Obama think that the creation, survival or spread was unrelated to the surge?

Why does Obama think that Sadr left Iraq for Iraq in January, 2007 and all of his Mahdi Army suddenly dropped below the radar screen? A large part of the justification for the surge was to stop the militia attacks. In 2004 and 2005, the U.S. had decimated the Mahdi Army. They damn well knew what was coming in the surge if they tried to continue their operations to Lebanize Iraq.

The only way Obama can defend his judgment is by falsely minimizing the success of U.S. forces. The fact that he has chosen to do so tells you even more about just how partisan and warped his judgment truly is.

Update: Joe Scarborough and Harold Ford Jr. respond not to Obama, but the argument he is in essence making that the Awakening Movements and their success was unrelated to the surge. It is brutal:

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Judgment To Lead?

Stuttering Baracky - and he stutters a lot today - can't even exercise sound judgment with the benefit of 20-20 hindsight. Asked if he knew in 2007 what he knows now, would he still have been against the surge, he answers that yes, he would.



What kind of a BS answer is that?

After stuttering for 30 seconds, he says he was correct to vote against the surge because he disagreed with the Bush Administration. That is meaningless. He came out against the surge in 2007 because he claimed it would backfire, worsening security. There is no logic whatsoever to his answer, though he tries to leave the impression that his vote was based on some higher ethical principle. This guy is the penultimate con-man.

There is much, much more.

There is an additional interview on ABC and Nightline still to come, though not yet available. There is this report in advance of the showing of the Nightline interview from Marc Ambinder blogging at the Atlantic (H/T Gateway Pundit):

Sen. Barack Obama said it was "fair" to notice that he did not anticipate that the surge of U.S. troops into Iraq would be coincident with the so-called Sunni Awakening and the decisions of Shia militias to reduce their footprints, the combination of which led to measurable declines in violence.

In an interview with ABC's Terry Moran, Obama said that he "did not anticipate, and I think that this is a fair characterization, the convergence of not only the surge but the Sunni awakening in which a whole host of Sunni tribal leaders decided that they had had enough with Al Qaeda, in the Shii’a community the militias standing down to some degrees. So what you had is a combination of political factors inside of Iraq that then came right at the same time as terrific work by our troops. Had those political factors not occurred, I think that my assessment would have been correct."

This is a complete twisting and rewrite of history.

The Sunni Awakening Movement was well underway by September 2006 - four months before the surge was announced and Obama took his stand against it. And it was a movement that was begun by the U.S. forces soliciting a partnership. Here is a short history of the movement from the Washington Post:

In November 2005, American commanders held a breakthrough meeting with top Sunni chiefs in Ramadi, hoping to lure them away from the insurgents' fold. The sheiks responded positively, promising cooperation and men for a police force that was then virtually nonexistent.

But in January 2006 a suicide bomber attacked a police recruiting drive, killing 70 people. Insurgents killed at least four sheiks for cooperating with the Americans, and many others fled.

The killings left the effort in limbo, until a turning point; insurgents killed a prominent sheik last year and refused to let family members bury the body for four days, enraging Sunni tribesmen, said U.S. Lt. Col. Miciotto Johnson, who heads the 1st Battalion, 77th Armored Regiment and visits al-Rishawi frequently in western Ramadi.

Al-Rishawi, whose father and three brothers were killed by al-Qaida assassins, said insurgents were "killing innocent people, anyone suspected of opposing them. They brought us nothing but destruction and we finally said, enough is enough."

Al-Rishawi founded the Anbar Salvation Council in September [2006] with dozens of Sunni tribes. Many of the new newly friendly leaders are believed to have at least tacitly supported the insurgency in the past, though al-Rishawi said he never did. . . .

Read the entire article. [emphasis added]

How could Obama claim that he did not anticipate something that was already well known and in full swing by the time the surge was announced in January, 2007? And he damn well knew about by July, 2007 when he was calling for a withdraw from Iraq, explicitly saying he did not care if doing so would lead to genocide.

As to Sadr, Obama's claim is ridiculous. Sadr's forces had twice been mauled by the U.S. and when the U.S. announced the surge, Sadr's forces were dead in the cross-hairs. That was WHY Sadr ordered a pull back - to preserve his Mahdi Army against U.S. forces. Does Obama lack the judgment to see the relationship between cause and effect?

And Obama fails to even acknowledge the role Iran has played. Looking at Obama objectively, one wonders if he believes reality is whatever he wants it be.

To continue:

Moran noted that Obama had claimed that the surge "would not make a significant dent in the violence."

Responded Obama: "In the violence in Iraq overall, right. So the point that I was making at the time was that the political dynamic was the driving force between that sectarian violence. And we could try to keep a lid on it, but if these underlining dynamic continued to bubble up and explode the way they were, then we would be in a difficult situation. I am glad that in fact those political dynamic shifted at the same time that our troops did outstanding work."

"But," asked Moran,"if the country had pursued your policy of withdrawing in the face of this horrific violence, what do you think Iraq would look like now?"

Obama said it would be hard to speculate. . . .

Let me help Mr. Obama. Speculation is guessing among equally possible conclusions. One speculates when there are insufficient facts to make a reasonable projection. But if the facts clearly preponderate in one direction, you are making reasonable estimates. So . . .

In 2007, Iran was deeply involved in dominating the Shia south and al Qaeda had a stranglehold on the Sunni population that the U.S. - supported by and supporting the Awakening movements - was just starting to unravel. Had we drawn back from that, Iraq today would be divided between al Qaeda, Iran and possibly Turkey. Further, al Qaeda, which is now suffering throughout the Middle East because of its complete failure in Iraq, would be in a far stronger position internationally and global Sunni terrorism would not be falling.

See, no speculation needed.

Obama also told Moran that there were circumstances under which he could revise his instruction to U.S. generals to begin withdrawing combat brigades at the pace of one-to-two per month.

"I've always reserved the right, uh, to say---let's say that ethnic, uh, ethnic fighting broke out once again---I've reserved the right to say---I don't--I'm not going to stand idly by if genocide is occurring. . . .

Is there anything that Obama will not lie about? Obama specifically justified surrendering in Iraq irrespective of whether it would lead to genocide. Let's take a trip down memory lane to July 20, 2007:

Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama said Thursday the United States cannot use its military to solve humanitarian problems and that preventing a potential genocide in Iraq isn’t a good enough reason to keep U.S. forces there.

“Well, look, if that’s the criteria by which we are making decisions on the deployment of U.S. forces, then by that argument you would have 300,000 troops in the Congo right now — where millions have been slaughtered as a consequence of ethnic strife — which we haven’t done,” Obama said in an interview with The Associated Press.

“We would be deploying unilaterally and occupying the Sudan, which we haven’t done. Those of us who care about Darfur don’t think it would be a good idea,” he said. Obama, a first-term senator from Illinois, said it’s likely there would be increased bloodshed if U.S. forces left Iraq. . . .

Read the entire article. This is a man willing to say anything to get elected. He is as intellectually a dishonest person as I can ever recall taking the public stage - and that includes the last Democrat to hold the Presidency. Indeed, Obama puts slick Willie to shame.

Bottom line - Obama's judgment is not just suspect, but nearly nonexistent. He may have some small iota of judgement to lead, but it is utterly clear that it would be in a direction no one would want to follow.

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McCain's new ad - Obama on Iraq

Change Before Your Very Eyes. Almost 8 minutes of it.



The Chameleon Candidate indeed. This is the most effective McCain ad to date.

Update: More commentary on the chameleon candidates ability to change principles with every new environment at Bookworm Room and the American Spectator.

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Victory Over Al Qaeda In Iraq; Silence In America

The British newpaper the Times is reporting on the success of U.S. and Iraqi forces in driving al Qaeda from Mosul, their last major urban stronghold in Iraq. With that in mind, let's not forget Harry Reid surrendering to al Qaeda 14 months ago:



Or Obama claiming that the surge would not work (final 2 minutes, 30 seconds of the video below taken on the eve of the State of the Union speech in 2007, where Bush announced the "surge.")



What has transpired in Iraq is a military turn-around and victory of historic proportions. It should be celebrated across the four corners of the U.S. It should be front page news. It is a victory that is reverberating throughout the Muslim world. Yet there is only silence in our perfidious MSM.
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This from the Times:

American and Iraqi forces are driving Al-Qaeda in Iraq out of its last redoubt in the north of the country in the culmination of one of the most spectacular victories of the war on terror.

After being forced from its strongholds in the west and centre of Iraq in the past two years, Al-Qaeda’s dwindling band of fighters has made a defiant “last stand” in the northern city of Mosul.

A huge operation to crush the 1,200 fighters who remained from a terrorist force once estimated at more than 12,000 began on May 10.

Operation Lion’s Roar, in which the Iraqi army combined forces with the Americans’ 3rd Armoured Cavalry Regiment, has already resulted in the death of Abu Khalaf, the Al-Qaeda leader, and the capture of more than 1,000 suspects.

The group has been reduced to hit-and-run attacks, including one that killed two off-duty policemen yesterday, and sporadic bombings aimed at killing large numbers of officials and civilians.

. . . American and Iraqi leaders believe that while it would be premature to write off Al-Qaeda in Iraq, the Sunni group has lost control of its last urban base in Mosul and its remnants have been largely driven into the countryside to the south.

. . . The number of foreign fighters coming over the border from Syria to bolster Al-Qaeda’s numbers is thought to have declined to as few as 20 a month, compared with 120 a month at its peak.

Brigadier General Abdullah Abdul, a senior Iraqi commander, said: “We’ve limited their movements with check-points. They are doing small attacks and trying big ones, but they’re mostly not succeeding.”

Major-General Mark Hertling, American commander in the north, said: “I think we’re at the irreversible point.”

Read the entire article. Well, at least this is front page news in Britain. How devoid of patriotism and objectivity must our MSM be to ignore this?

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Pelosi Crosses The Line

The latest from the train wreck that is our House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi:

"The surge didn’t accomplish its goal. And some of the success of the surge is . . . [because of] the goodwill of the Iranians."

So the question is, is she traitorous or simply insane?
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Nancy Pelosi gave an interview with the SF Chronicle yesterday. When asked about what she observed in Iraq during her May 17 visit, she replied:

Well, the purpose of the surge was to provide a secure space, a time for the political change to occur to accomplish the reconciliation. That didn’t happen. Whatever the military success, and progress that may have been made, the surge didn’t accomplish its goal. And some of the success of the surge is that the goodwill of the Iranians-they decided in Basra when the fighting would end, they negotiated that cessation of hostilities-the Iranians.

As to reconciliation, Ms. Pelosi's narrative is ridiculous. Even our own perfidious MSM is now acknowledging both the great strides towards reconciliation that Iraq has made and the fact that the Iraqis are rallying around Maliki as a nationalist leader. Maliki is extremely popular across the spectrum of Iraq's citizens. Indeed, the only places where he is unpopular are in Tehran and, apparently, in the offices of Congressional Democrats.

As to Iran, any inference from events surrounding Basra that Iran is acting with goodwill towards the U.S. and the government of Iraq is not merely unsupported by the facts, it is a highly malignant falsehood. Iran's primary contribution to the situation in Iraq is death and mayhem. Their malign and extensive proxy war is at the heart of the need for the continuation of the surge.

Pelosi is a hyperpartisan hack. She is either wholly unable to distinguish reality or quite willing to ignore it in her all encompassing desire for political power.

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Reconciliation:

ABC News, May 28, 2008: Maliki's Midas Touch

. . . The Sunnis, Kurds and Shiites alike all eventually lauded the Basra operation as a huge success and whole-heartedly backed Maliki in his next endeavor — to revisit Mosul, and take on al Qaeda.

. . . Acutely aware of his political momentum, on May 12, Maliki, accompanied by crews from Al Iraqia TV, the official state-run media outlet — went to Mosul — and Maliki personally, and publicly, took charge of the military operations there.

He was the lead story and plastered across almost every local front page.

. . . Sadr is trying to grasp on to a sliver of political leverage, claiming to have struck the deal which brought his people their livelihoods back. While Maliki is lauding the latest in a series of successes to ensure security and a regained national unity to his country.

Certainly, it seems as though there is little Maliki can do wrong these days. With provincial elections around the corner, an Iraqi future without Maliki is almost impossible to imagine.

The Atlantic, May 13, 2008, Maliki's Southern Strategy

. . . At first, Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's decision to confront Moqtada al-Sadr's Iranian-backed militas looked like a major strategic misstep. Now it appears to have transformed Iraqi politics, potentially paving the way for real reconciliation between Sunni and Shia.

. . . [T]here has also been a more lasting change: The Sadrists have been marginalized. Even the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, who has been reluctant to make political interventions in recent years, pointedly condemned Sadr for refusing to disarm. Leading Sunni faction have also returned to the fold. The Kurds, who have their own problems with Sadr, are also on board. Maliki, suprisingly enough, increasingly looks like the leader of all Iraqis.

. . . Unfortunately, few Americans understand what Maliki has accomplished, and how much international assistance he needs to beat back foreign elements that aim to undermine Iraq's fragile democracy -- which is, as far as neighboring governments are concerned (particularly those that begin with an "I" and end with an "n"), a profoundly subversive influence.

USA Today, April 22, 2008, Iraq Frees Detainees

Most of those released were Sunnis who had been low-level army officials or former members of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party. . . .

The prisoners are being freed under an amnesty law passed by Iraq's parliament in February. More than 52,400 detainees in government custody have applied for their freedom. Of those, nearly 78%, or more than 40,000, were granted amnesty. . . .

"This is sort of a new life," Othman said. "Terrorism started and now it is ending. A new life is coming, God willing."

NYT, February 12, 2008, Making (Some) Progress In Iraq

Iraq’s Parliament has finally approved a budget, outlined the scope of provincial powers, set an Oct. 1 date for provincial elections and voted a general amnesty for detainees. All these steps are essential for national conciliation.

. . . We are, of course, cheered by the news that representatives from Iraq’s three main ethnic groups — Shiite, Sunni and Kurd — finally saw some benefit in compromise. . . .

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Iran

Washington Post, May 29, 2008, U.S. Cites Big Gains Against Al Qaeda

. . . [CIA Chief Michael]Hayden warned, however, that progress in Iraq is being undermined by increasing interference by Iran, which he accused of supplying weapons, training and financial assistance to anti-U.S. insurgents. While declining to endorse any particular strategy for dealing with Iran, he described the threat in stark terms.

"It is the policy of the Iranian government, approved at the highest levels of that government, to facilitate the killing of American and other coalition forces in Iraq. Period," he said.

Fox News, Aug. 9, 2007, Captured Video Shows Iraqi Insurgents Firing Sophisticated Iranian-Made Rockets at U.S. Positions

Dramatic video produced by Iraqi insurgents and captured in a raid earlier this week by U.S. troops clearly shows a battery of sophisticated Iranian-made rocket launchers firing on American positions east of Baghdad, Pentagon officials said Wednesday.

The video, captured during a raid on Monday by the 3rd Squadron, 1st Cavalry Regiment in northeast Nahrawan, shows insurgents setting up and carrying out an attack on Sunday, as well as an attack on July 11 that killed one soldier and wounded 15 others, officials said. The raid last month appeared to involve 34 launchers firing 107 mm Iranian-made rockets.

AFP, May 5, 2008, Iran Ex-President Under Fire For Comments On Insurgents

Ex-president [of Iran] Mohmamad Khatami was under fire from hardliners on Monday after comments interpreted as accusing Iran's clerical leaders of supporting insurgents in the Middle East.

. . . His speech has been seen by some observers as accusing the Iranian authorities of encouraging militants to destabilize the Middle East, in particular Iraq and Lebanon. . . .

Voices of Iraq, May 3, 2008, Karbala Operations Commander Accuses Iran of Disturbing the City

Karbala operations commander said on Saturday that Iranian intervention is disturbing the city's security.

He noted that huge quantities of Iranian made weapons were seized throughout different locations in the province.

"There is Iranian intervention . . . in Karbala," Major General Ra'id Shaker Jawdat said in a press conference at Karbala operations command's building, after showing a large quantity of Iranian-made weapons.

. . . "Those weapons entered Karbala to destabilize security, . . .

AEI, May 13, 2008, Speech by Col. H.R. McMaster, Advisor to Gen. Petraeus

Col H.R. McMaster: . . . When I traveled through the south on a last couple of visits, what I heard – and this is again on the point of militias being increasingly discredited, and this is from Iraqi Shiite leaders who were saying things like Iran is the true occupier of Iraq. They would say jokingly that the Iranians are now all Iraqi nationalists, which is a thinly-veiled swipe at some of the militias in some of these areas.

And so whereas before about a year ago, you wouldn’t really hear Iraqi leaders, especially in these areas in the south, offering criticism of Iran and the parties and communities within Iraq who were playing host to Iranian influence but you hear that almost all the time now among Shiite Arab leaders. And also a connection to Iran, and this again affects the militias, is becoming a liability much like being connected to Al-Qaeda was a liability for so-called resistance movements in the Sunni Arab community. These are again changes that I’ve seen in the last year.

The contradictions of Iranian policies I’ve mentioned at the beginning have been exposed and Iraqis have to deal with them now. They have to deal with them again partly because of that pressure on the political parties, who are embarrassed by the connections to Iran and what Iran is doing. So the sixth thing is, no big surprise, the exposure of Iranian activity and Iran’s true intentions. . . .

. . . In the case of what Iran is doing in Iraq, it is so damn obvious to anybody who wants to look into it, I think, that is drop the word “alleged” and say what they’re doing, which is, we know for a fact organizing and directing operations against the government of Iraq and against our forces – the government of Iraq forces and our forces – we know they have done that, certainly in the past. We know that they are supplying them with weapons and the most effective weapons that they used to attack the Iraqi people and our forces and these include the long-range high payload rockets that have been coming in from Iraq as well as the explosively formed projectile roadside bombs that come from Iran.

We know that they have trained forces in the employment of these munitions - and in pretty large numbers. We know that they were concerned that their maligned hand being obvious in Iraq would alienate their Arab neighbors so they try Arabize these efforts by using Lebanese Hezbollah for a lot of the training but it’s a pretty cosmetic shift that they’ve made in some portions of the training.

We know for a fact that they have directed assassination operations. They have a reputation of being some of the best assassins in the world. They’ve trained Iraqis to do that. They’ve trained them in skills not only for roadside bombs and in long-range rockets but also in snipers and other skills used to intimidate or kill individuals. And we know that they have been sort of backing all horses to destabilize the situation and we know that their support is continued to key Badr officials who are in influential positions who remain on the payroll of Iran and to advance the interests of Iran and, in some cases, to provide leadership for other militia organizations that are stood up.

We know that they ostensibly have supported this government but have armed, equipped and trained a militia that has been attacking the very government they ostensibly support. And this is not just something in Basra, this is last year. This is in Nasariyah, this is Samwa, this is in Diwaniyahm, this is in Amarah and it was in Karbala in August 26th and 27th of last year. And now again in Basra.

So I think it’s very obvious. Now on this specific question you have - has it increased or has it decreased? I think it’s very clear that what Iran has done over the last year is try to develop a considerable latent capability that it could turn on in short notice. And I think that it may have been that this bold and very quick action by the Prime Minister in Basra foiled what was to be perhaps a much larger and coordinated effort, maybe even coordinated with efforts in other places in the region, like what we’re seen happening right now in Lebanon.

So, anyway, I think it’s very obvious what they’re doing. I think it’s very obvious to Iraqis, it certainly is. The Iraqis I’ve spoken to are incensed about it and I think it’s no longer alleged. Yes?

Demetri Sevastopulo: If it’s been going on for so long, why is it you said earlier that the Iraqis are only recently starting to talk about Iranian involvement? Why did it not bother them before?

H.R. McMaster: Now, that’s a great point. Part of the reason is the intimidation factor. We know that Iran had really been able to establish a pretty high degree of control over some key officials, you know, provided them protection. And then also some assassination cells and elements of militia that would kill anybody who made a statement against Iranian interests. So what I think what has happened is Iran has so blatantly undermined the security situation and it’s so clear now that they want to keep Iraq as a weak, failing state, is what they would like I think, dependent on them for support that many more Iraqis now are disavowing connections to Iran and providing more space, more physical space in terms of intimidation. There’s more sort of a political space to address this issue than there had been previously.

And then also, if you remember Iran was a big supporter of the militias which before and this goes back to the effective operations against Al-Qaeda and the importance of it, those militias were justified in large measure because of the perception that they were protectors against these Takfirists and Salafi jihadistss who play with Al-Qaeda, and the Baathists, the former regime. So all these, what Iran could do was raise the specter of terrorist attacks against Shiite communities as a justification for its support in nefarious activities. Now, the contradiction of what they’ve been doing is much more obvious to many more people than it had been previously. . . .

Nancy Pelosi has slandered the incredible accomplishments of our soldiers. She owes our soldiers and our nation an apology. And she owes a special apology to the family of every soldier killed and maimed by Iran in the conduct of their proxy war. She has denigrated their sacrifice with her falsehoods in her pursuit of partisan power.

The tremendous offensiveness of Pelosi's falsehoods are bad enough. But what makes her remarks truly malignant are that those remarks are upon an issue at the heart of our national security. Indeed, on the largest national security issue we face, Iran, pretending that they are a benign and helpful entity can only serve to place our nation in ever greater danger. It prevents us from acknowledging reality and developing a plan to deal with Iran that will have the support of our nation. That is not merely inexcusable, but for the third most powerful person in our government, it is traitorous and criminal.

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McCain Explains The Clear Differences

This video is culled from a great post at Gateway Pundit rolling up a great series of McCain comments on Iraq and his criticism of his challengers embrace of defeat.

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Iraq News You Won't Hear From The MSM

U.S. and Iraqi forces are succeeding decisively in Iraq, against both al Qaeda and Iran's proxies. As to al Qaeda, the scale of their defeat was sufficient by November of last year to move Osama bin Laden to sound the call of defeat, stating "the darkness [in Iraq] is pitch black." Al Qaeda is now fighting and losing in its last stronghold of Mosul, where the Iraqi Army is leading the charge against them in Operation Lion's Roar. And from an al Qaeda website comes evidence in hard numbers of just how crushing their defeat in Iraq has become.
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This update from Long War Journal on Operation Lion's Roar from Mosul:

With the Mahdi Army subdued in Basra and a cease-fire under way with the Sadrist movement in Sadr City in Baghdad, the focus of the Iraqi government has shifted to the northern city of Mosul, where al Qaeda maintains its last urban stronghold. On May 10, the Iraqi security forces launched Operation Lion's Roar in an effort to roll back al Qaeda and allied Sunni insurgent groups.

Al Qaeda in Iraq's last major ratline into Syria spans westward from Mosul into Tal Afar and the crossing point at Sinjar. The terror group is waging a brutal campaign to prevent the Iraqi Army and US forces from securing the province and to keep their supply lines to Syria open.

The Iraqi security forces started the operation by declaring a curfew in the province and conducting operations to round up wanted terrorists. In the six days since the operation began, Iraqi forces detained 1,068 suspects, according to General Riyadh Jalal Tawfiq, the commander of the Ninewa Operational Command.

Of those captured, "just under 200" Tier 1 and Tier 2 al Qaeda and Islamic State of Iraq operatives have been detained, said Major General Mark Hertling, the commander of Multinational Division North said during a briefing on May 15.

"There have been some very big fishes caught," Hertling said. Tier 1 operatives are operational leaders. Tier 2 operatives are foreign fighters or weapons facilitators, bomb makers, and cell leaders.

US and Iraqi forces have killed or captured several key al Qaeda leaders in Mosul over the past several months. Fourteen of the top 30 al Qaeda operatives who have been killed or captured in the past three months were al Qaeda leaders in Mosul, including three al Qaeda leaders from Saudi Arabia.

The release of captive terrorists and insurgents has been a problem in Mosul and elsewhere in Iraq. US military officers have complained that the Iraqi courts are ill-equipped to deal with captured suspects, as judges are bribed or intimidated to released detainees known to have conducted attacks. Or some judges are corrupt. "The bad judges here make it difficult to keep them in," Lieutenant Colonel Eric Price, the leader of the 8th Brigade, 2nd Iraqi Army Division’s Military Transition Team told The Long War Journal. Only 57 detainees have been released in Mosul since the operation began.

To counter the problems with the courts, the Ninewa Operational Command has established a special court. "Detainees will go from brigade to division and then to the NOC [Ninewa Operational Command] instead of the Iraqi Police (the usual route)," Price said. "Maybe, that will make the difference here."

The Iraqi government is also providing an opportunity for members of the insurgency to lay down their weapons. "We have decided to grant clemency to members of armed groups in return for handing over their medium and heavy weapons to the security agencies or tribal chiefs in their areas within a period of 10 days," said Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki. The prime minister flew to Mosul on May 14 to personally direct operations in the northern city.

Read the entire post. And this from Iraqi blogger, Talisman Gate:

A prolific jihadist sympathizer has posted an ‘explosive’ study on one of the main jihadist websites in which he laments the dire situation that the mujaheddin find themselves in Iraq by citing the steep drop in the number of insurgent operations conducted by the various jihadist groups, most notably Al-Qaeda’s 94 percent decline in operational ability over the last 12 months when only a year and half ago Al-Qaeda accounted for 60 percent of all jihadist activity!

The author, writing under the pseudonym ‘Dir’a limen wehhed’ [‘A Shield for the Monotheist’], posted his ‘Brief Study on the Consequences of the Division [Among] the [Jihadist] Groups on the Cause of Jihad in Iraq’ on May 12 and it is being displayed by the administration of the Al-Ekhlaas website—one of Al-Qaeda’s chief media outlets—among its more prominent recent posts. He's considered one of Al-Ekhlaas's "esteemed" writers.

The author tallies up and compares the numbers of operations claimed by each insurgent group under four categories: a year and half ago (November 2006), a year ago (May 2007), six months ago (November 2007) and now (May 2008). He demonstrated that while Al-Qaeda’s Islamic State of Iraq could claim 334 operations in Nov. 06 and 292 in May 07, their violent output dropped to 25 in Nov. 07 and 16 so far in May 08. Keep in mind that these assessments are based on Al-Qaeda's own numbers.

The author also shows that similar steep drops were exhibited by other jihadist groups, and he neatly puts it all together in these two charts:

Read the entire post. Unbelievable, is it not, that Obama or anyone who calls themself an American can pine for a defeat in Iraq and promise to toss away the amazing success we have had there.

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An NYT Iraqi Reporter On Security In Baghdad & The Need For Americans To Stay In Iraq

Mohamed Hussein, an Iraqi reporter for the NYT, recently returned to Iraq from Syria where he had gone to escape the violence of Baghdad in 2006. He is amazed by the changes in security, grateful to the Americans, and warns of the dire consequences that will occur if the U.S. leaves Iraq before the gains in security are made permanent.

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This from Mr. Hussein writing in the NYT:

Mohamed Hussein is an Iraqi employee of The New York Times in Baghdad. He left Iraq on New Year’s Day in 2007 to escape the sectarian violence from Shiite militias and Sunni insurgents who were both active in his mixed neighborhood. He returned last week, after 15 months out of Iraq. . . .

BAGHDAD — I came back to Baghdad last week.

First, it is important to mention the main cause that made me leave everything behind and go to Syria. By the end of 2006 my neighborhood had become an unbearable place. No one could continue there. It was without any simple services, from bakery shops to the hospital and physicians. They all closed their doors and left.
But the real cause is something hidden inside me that affected me more. . . .

The other more important cause that made me leave was that it seemed like someone had started a campaign to assassinate everyone living in my area, no matter from which side -Sunni or Shiite - as they just needed numbers of people who had to be killed.

In Syria I did not really get any rest because although my wife and children came with me, my parents stayed behind. They were alone and they are both aged people, so they did not think anyone would target them. . . .

After spending more than a year in Syria one day my father called me saying: “You can now return, and do not worry. Everything is fine now.”

. . . I wanted to return, but at the same time I hesitated. I wanted to know if the situation there was as people said, or if they just exaggerated.

During my travel from Syria to Baghdad I was completely relaxed. There were no worries, no fear of looters and terrorists with Al Qaeda, or Ansar al-Sunna (Protectors of the Sunni), Jaish al-Mohammed (Army of Mohammed) who used to control everything on the expressway between Syria and Baghdad.

Then when we stopped to get some rest near a big restaurant called Bilaad ash-Sham I saw many Iraqi and Syrian buses filled with travelers, and many four-wheel-drive vehicles.

They told me that everything was going fine and that stories that I had heard about the security situation in some Baghdad districts were right.

I reached Baghdad at 6 a.m. . . .

. . . I had heard about: the huge difference in security, which was much better than when I left.

. . . It was a really strange feeling to see my neighborhood again. In some ways it was the same, in others different. The main road had become ugly because there are now many damaged buildings and shops, and I noticed the marks of bullets and shrapnel everywhere around.

At the end of the journey when we reached the main entrance of my neighborhood my mother told me “Just slow down and say ‘Asalaam alaikum,’ (Peace be with you). Do not tell them you were in Syria.” She was afraid they would think I was a wanted man who had run away.

At that moment everything I had heard before seemed not right and I became more anxious with each meter I came closer to the checkpoint. Then I turned my head to the left and I saw the biggest cement wall I have ever seen, which encircles my neighborhood.

There were two Iraqi soldiers standing at the checkpoint. One of them stopped me and told me to open the trunk and engine. The other smiled, saying: “It is the day of bombed cars.”

He inspected my car with an explosive detector device. The other was just looking at us and it seemed that he recognized my mother’s face because he said: “Hi, auntie.”
Now I felt really safe because those people were working properly, not like the security forces in my neighborhood before who were making a secure path during the night for militia members to pass through, targeting everything there.

I think that the Iraqi police and army are working in the right way because there is an American military center inside my neighborhood. But all the people I met said that if the Americans left, those militias would eat our flesh without mercy.
I spent my first night without hearing any kind of shooting and mortar bombing, not like a year earlier when my daughter was asking me about all the sounds around and I was telling her, “Do not panic, baby, that is fireworks.”

This morning I heard the man who sells cooking gas knocking on the cylinders shouting “gaz, gaz, gaz ” which is something that had not happened for two years in my neighborhood.

This meant that all the things I heard about the improvements are true. Even the people are more friendly and I can say that there is now a kind of mutual trust between the people and the soldiers, not like before when there was no trust between each other.

Now, maybe if we think deeply about it, we will find that each needs the other. People need the soldiers to secure them. At the same time the U.S. troops are now in a safe place, maybe they can have more than one Green Zone.

Will it stay safe or not?

I guess that all depends on the American troops, since we will not have qualified Iraqi forces soon. Although most Iraqi forces are sincere you find some have been infiltrated by groups of gunmen and sectarian people who made the mess all around us.

So we still need the Americans because if they intend to leave, there will be something like a hurricane which will extract everything - people, buildings and even trees. Everything that has happened and all that safety will be past, just like a sweet dream.

As people say in my neighborhood: “The Americans are now Ansar al Sunna.” Protectors of the Sunni.

Read the entire article. Wow. Of all places I would expect to see this article, the NYT was the last. My hats off to them for publishing it.

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Obama, War and Political Expediency

Michael Gerson documents how Obama has placed political expediency over principle on the issue of the Iraq War. This transcends the mere question of whether Obama is being less than honest with the American public and goes to the heart of whether we would want such an individual as Commander in Chief.


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I am inclined to take candidates at their word. But that said, even if Obama has no intention of withdrawing our soldiers from Iraq were he to be elected president, would we not want such an individual as commander in chief of our soldiers during time of war? As I have written before:

[C]haracter matters in war, more so than in any other endeavor. By character I mean attempting to do what one perceives as right based on principles, even if doing so comes at great personal cost. It is the polar opposite of making decisions on the basis of expediency.

In that post, I go on to demonstrate why the character of a commander is so critical, and that a person willing to subordinate their principles on the scales of political expediency is not acceptable as a wartime commander in chief. They will be less likely to prosecute the war to successful conclusion and their decisions will be more likely to endanger our soldiers. Read the entire post.

Within that rubric, Obama clearly falls on the side of a person who has demonstrated that he places political expediency over principles. Michael Gerson, in an excellent article in today's Washington Post, examines Obama's changing positions on the Iraq war and compares them to McCain's steadfast adherence to his principles.

. . . If Barack Obama eventually wins the Democratic nomination, his extraordinary rise may be traced to a speech on Oct. 2, 2002, at an antiwar rally in downtown Chicago. That day, Obama, then an obscure state senator, said: "I know that even a successful war against Iraq will require a U.S. occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences."

For many Democrats, this prescience has given Obama the aura of a prophet. And this early opposition lends credibility to his current promise: to swiftly end the U.S. combat role in Iraq.

Recently, this pledge was called into question by Obama's now-former adviser, Samantha Power, who said: "He will, of course, not rely on some plan that he's crafted as a presidential candidate or a U.S. senator. He will rely upon a plan -- an operational plan -- that he pulls together in consultation with people who are on the ground."

. . . In a new article on Commentary magazine's Web site, Peter Wehner undertakes a thorough examination of Obama's record on Iraq. It is, shall we say, complex.

More than a year after the initial success of the invasion, Obama explained, "There's not much of a difference between my position and George Bush's position at this stage." And he was correct. In July 2004, he argued that America had an "absolute obligation" to stay in Iraq until the country stabilized. "The failure of the Iraqi state would be a disaster," he said. "It would dishonor the 900-plus men and women who have already died."

Two months later, Obama criticized Bush's conduct of the war but repeated that simply pulling out would further destabilize Iraq, making it an "extraordinary hotbed of terrorist activity." And he signaled his openness to the deployment of additional troops if this would make an eventual withdrawal more likely.

In June 2006, Obama still opposed "a date certain for the total withdrawal of U.S. troops." "I don't think it's appropriate for Congress," he said, "to make those decisions about what happens in the field."

By late 2006, as public support for the Iraq war disintegrated and his own political ambitions quickened, Obama called for a "phased withdrawal." When Bush announced the surge, Obama saw nothing in the plan that would "make a significant dent in the sectarian violence that's taking place there" -- a lapse in his prophetic powers.

When Obama announced his presidential candidacy on Feb. 10, 2007, he stated, "I have a plan that will bring our combat troops home by March of 2008." Then in May and again in November, he voted against funding American forces in Iraq.

Wehner concludes that Obama is guilty of "problematically ad-hoc judgments at best, calculatingly cynical judgments at worst." And he notes that while McCain has been consistently right about Iraq in the years since the invasion -- highly critical of the early strategy and supportive of a successful surge -- Obama has been consistently wrong in supporting the early, failed strategy and opposing the surge, even as its success became evident.

. . . [T]here is little doubt that Obama has gained in political support among Democrats as his positions on Iraq have become progressively antiwar. His March 2008 withdrawal deadline -- which is up now -- would have undone the Anbar Awakening, massively strengthened al-Qaeda and increased civilian carnage. . . .

The Iraq war determined the paths for McCain and Obama. But there is a large difference between them. McCain eventually won his nomination because he showed political courage in the face of overwhelming pressure. Obama may eventually win his nomination because he surrendered to that pressure.

Read the entire article.

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