The Discerning Texan

All that is necessary for evil to triumph, is for good men to do nothing.
-- Edmund Burke

Thursday, June 14, 2007

The Progress Report is Better than They want you to Think

You may have heard already about that Washington Post story which was headlined to say the situation in Iraq was "worse" than when the Surge started--don't believe it. Reporter Ann Scott Tyson has twisted this story to heavily accentuate the (small) negative and ignore the prevalent postive. Who would have guessed??

To say article is biased is like saying the Pacific Ocean has water. It has almost gotten to the point where if you read a Washington Post headline, and infer the exact opposite, you will be much closer to the truth. Goebbels would have been proud of Ms. Tyson.

Fortunately we have Dafydd, who sets us straight:

This is very good news that the Washington Post is trying to spin as bad news (yes, I know you're too stunned to speak).

Let's start with a brief primer of what the counterinsurgency strategy actually entails (blue text represents preparation of the field of battle):

Five new American brigades into Baghdad;

Three additional Iraqi army brigades into Baghdad;

Several new American battalions into Anbar;

The objective is first to restore security to Baghdad and Anbar by driving insurgents out of the capital and out of al-Qaeda in Iraq's home province;

After security is restored to those two provinces, the second objective is to expand that security to adjacent provinces (turning "red" to "pink" and "pink" to "white") by again driving insurgents outward (and killing or capturing them whenever possible);

Continuing in this fashion, "expanding security outward," means that eventually, the insurgents have nowhere else to go in Iraq, and the country will be as pacified as any Arab Moslem country can be.

The fifth and final U.S. Army brigade is now in Baghdad and being readied, along with the Iraqi battalions; while the battalions have moved into Anbar. Thus we have completed prepping the battlefield and are just about to commence the actual security operation.