The Discerning Texan

As leaders of this great nation we should be constantly asking ourselves how our actions help us succeed in this war. The Republican Party has made it clear that our goal is success in Iraq. But Democrats have decided to allow the extreme liberal group, MoveOn.org, to become the megaphone for their party and lower the debate to uncharted depths. MoveOn.org has labeled General Petraeus a liar and a traitor to his country, a betrayer of the public trust.

Republicans have condemned this ad and all that is suggests. Democrats have allowed, and tacitly encouraged, this extreme liberal group to define what their party stands for and they are doing nothing to stop it. That silence you hear from the other side of the aisle is because of one simple fact: because ‘they’ are one in the same -- Moveon.org and the Democrat Party.

"We bought it, we own it, and we’re going to take it back.” Those are the now infamous words spoken by MoveOn.org founder Eli Pariser when speaking about the Democrat Party after the 2004 elections. “We own it.” That message was clear when Senate Democrats objected on the floor of the Senate to a resolution to denounce the despicable ad calling Gen. Petraeus a traitor. Make no mistake -- MoveOn.org owns the Democrat Party.

“We bought it.” And how did MoveOn.org buy the Democrat Party? Campaign donations, of course. MoveOn.org has routed hundreds of thousands of campaign dollars to Democrats and they show no signs of slowing down. Congressman Tom Allen of Maine has accepted over $250,000 in donations through MoveOn.org alone. So it’s not surprising that Tom Allen has been deafeningly silent on this issue. Apparently the prospect of campaign funds is enough of an incentive for Democrats to stand idly by while a respected General is maligned before the country he has committed his life to protecting.

Labels: America War Support, Defeatocrats, Democrat Sabotage, Iraq, MoveOn.Org, Petreaus, The Left

Labels: America War Support, Defeatocrats, Democrat Sabotage, Iraq, MoveOn.Org, Petreaus, The Left, The Surge

Labels: America War Support, Attack Politics, Cartoons, Democrat Sabotage, Iraq, Petreaus, The Surge

IN THE SPRING of 1954, the US Senate convened hearings at the instigation of Senator Joseph McCarthy to press his anticommunist investigations into the Department of the Army. The hearings were broadcast live on television, and the American public was able to witness firsthand the tactics McCarthy used to intimidate his foes. At a critical moment in the hearings, a key governmental witness, Army lawyer Joseph Welch, rose to defend one of the junior Army lawyers whose career, Welch alleged, McCarthy had destroyed. Welch turned to McCarthy and memorably intoned: "Let us not assassinate this lad further, senator. You have done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?"It was remarkable political theater and historians credit it with breaking the back of McCarthy's attack on the Army, which in turn broke the back of his anticommunist efforts. In short order, McCarthy's allies abandoned him, he was discredited, and he left the Senate in disgrace.

We may be about to witness a McCarthy-Army-Welch moment in the debate over Iraq. This time, the role of McCarthy is played by MoveOn.org, a liberal political group that launched its own attack on a respected US Army figure. In yesterday's New York Times, the day that General David Petraeus would give his long-awaited, congressionally mandated report on his military activities in Iraq, MoveOn.org ran a full-page advertisement that accused Petraeus of activities befitting a traitor. The advertisement alleges, without evidence, that Petraeus is not going to give his honest, professional assessment of the situation in Iraq but instead will be "cooking the books" to curry favor with the Bush White House. The heart of the advertisement is a juvenile pun on Petraeus's name: General Betray Us?

The MoveOn.org ad is vicious, and would garner comment even if it were merely one more primal scream in the coarse blogosphere debate over Iraq. But it is not an angry e-mail or blog entry. It is a deliberate attack on the senior Army commander, in a major daily newspaper, with the intention of destroying as much of his credibility as possible so that his military advice could be more easily rejected by antiwar members of Congress.

The attack was part of an elaborate effort to undermine public support for the Iraq war, and was foreshadowed by an unnamed Democratic senator who told a reporter, "No one wants to call [Petraeus] a liar on national TV . . . The expectation is that the outside groups will do this for us." The effort is funded by powerful special interests, and has all the trappings of a major political campaign.

Precisely because it is so vicious, so public, and so deliberate, the attack on Petraeus cannot be ignored by either side in the Iraq debate. Supporters of the war are duty-bound, like Joseph Welch, to rise and ask of war opponents, "Have you left no sense of decency?" Antiwar members of Congress, like Senator McCarthy's allies, are obliged to answer.

Important as was yesterday's appearance before Congress by General David Petraeus, the events leading up to his testimony may have been more significant. Members of the Democratic leadership and their supporters have now normalized the practice of accusing their opponents of lying. If other members of the Democratic Party don't move quickly to repudiate this turn, the ability of the U.S. political system to function will be impaired in a way no one would wish for.

Well, with one exception. MoveOn.org, the Democratic activist group, bought space in the New York Times yesterday to accuse General Petraeus of "cooking the books for the White House." The ad transmutes the general's name into "General Betray Us."

"Betrayal," as every military officer knows, is a word that through the history of their profession bears the stain of acts that are both dishonorable and unforgivable. That is to say, MoveOn.org didn't stumble upon this word; it was chosen with specific intent, to convey the most serious accusation possible against General Petraeus, that his word is false, that he is a liar and that he is willing to betray his country. The next and obvious word to which this equation with betrayal leads is treason. That it is merely insinuated makes it worse.

MoveOn.org calls itself a "progressive" political group, but it is in fact drawn from the hard left of American politics and a pedigree that sees politics as not so much an ongoing struggle but a final competition. Their Web-based group is new to the political scene, but its politics are not so new. More surprising and troubling are the formerly liberal institutions and politicians who now share this political ethos.

[...]

Can this really be the new standard of political rhetoric across the Democratic Party? There was a time when the party's institutional elites, such as the Times, would have pulled it back from reducing politics to all or nothing. They would have blown the whistle on such accusations. Now they are leading the charge.

Under these new terms, public policy is no longer subject to debate, discussion and disagreement over competing views and interpretations. Instead, the opposition is reduced to the status of liar. Now the opposition is not merely wrong, but lacks legitimacy and political standing. The goal here is not to debate, but to destroy.

Labels: America War Support, Democrat Sabotage, Iraq, MoveOn.Org, Nutroots, Petreaus

Labels: 9/11, 9/11 Truthers, America War Support, Islamic Fascism, Terrorism

The GAO report reflects everything that has been wrong with the discussion about Iraq since the end of 2006. Through no fault of the GAO's, the organization was sent on a fool's errand by Congress. Its mandate was not to evaluate progress in Iraq, but to determine whether or not the Iraqi government had met the 18 benchmarks. As a result, as the report repeatedly notes, the GAO was forced to fit an extraordinarily complicated reality into a black-and-white, yes-or-no simplicity. In addition, the GAO's remit extended only to evaluating progress on the Congressionally-sanctioned 18 benchmarks, 14 of which were established between eight and 11 months ago in a very different context. As a result, the report ignores completely a number of crucial positive developments that were not foreseen when the benchmarks were established and that, in fact, offer the prospect of a way forward that is much more likely to succeed than the year-old, top-down concept the GAO was told to measure. As the situation in Iraq has been changing dynamically over the past eight months, as American strategy and operations, both military and political, have been adjusting on the ground to new realities, the debate in Washington has remained mired in the preconceptions and approaches of 2006. The GAO report epitomizes this fact.

A number of commentators have already pointed out the absurdity of measuring whether or not the Iraqis had accomplished benchmarks rather than considering their progress toward doing so. Even the GAO found that task ridiculous, which is why, after criticism from the Departments of State and Defense, it invented the category of "partially met" as a third option, a category not foreseen in the legislation mandating the report.

One of the most striking things about the GAO Report is its failure to take adequate notice of the Anbar Awakening and the general movement within the Sunni Arab community against Al Qaeda In Iraq and toward the Coalition. "Anbar" appears twice in the document, both times in a comment noting that violence has fallen in that province, but without reference to the turn of the Sunni population against the terrorists. That omission is unfathomable considering the significance of the movement among Sunnis over precisely the time in which the GAO was researching and producing this report. During the same period in which the report's authors note that they were in Iraq, I was also in Iraq, and received detailed briefings on the Sunni movement not only in Anbar, but also in Diyala, Baghdad, and Babil provinces. It is difficult to imagine that the GAO authors did not receive similar briefings, but even harder to understand why, if they did, they made no mention of the phenomenon. Of course, the Congressionally-mandated benchmarks take no account of the grassroots Sunni movement, and so made it difficult for the GAO to bring them into the picture.

Labels: America War Support, Congress, Democracy, Iraq, US Senate

Labels: al-Sadr, America War Support, Iran, Iraq, War strategy, War Successes

... Mr. Bush told the Veterans of Foreign Wars convention:

Many argued that if we pulled out there would be no consequences for the Vietnamese people... A columnist for The New York Times wrote in a similar vein in 1975, just as Cambodia and Vietnam were falling to the communists: "It's difficult to imagine," he said, "how their lives could be anything but better with the Americans gone." A headline on that story, date Phnom Penh, summed up the argument: "Indochina Without Americans: For Most a Better Life." The world would learn just how costly these misimpressions would be.

I don't know about "the world," but apparently a big chunk of America still believes in these "misimpressions." As The New York Times put it, "In urging Americans to stay the course in Iraq, Mr. Bush is challenging the historical memory that the pullout from Vietnam had few negative repercussions for the United States and its allies."

Well, it had a "few negative repercussions" for America's allies in South Vietnam, who were promptly overrun by the north. And it had a "negative repercussion" for the former Cambodian Prime Minister, Sirik Matak, to whom the U.S. Ambassador sportingly offered asylum. "I cannot, alas, leave in such a cowardly fashion," he told him. "I never believed for a moment that you would have this sentiment of abandoning a people which has chosen liberty ... I have committed this mistake of believing in you, the Americans." So Sirik Matak stayed in Phnom Penh and a month later was killed by the Khmer Rouge, along with the best part of two million other people. If it's hard for individual names to linger in The New York Times' "historical memory," you'd think the general mound of corpses would resonate.

But perhaps these distant people of exotic hue are not what the panjandrums of The New York Times regard as real "allies." In the wake of Vietnam, the Communists gobbled up chunks of real estate all over the map, and ever closer to America's back yard. In Grenada, Maurice Bishop toppled the Prime Minister Sir Eric Gairy: It was the first ever coup in the British West Indies, and in a faintly surreal touch led to Queen Elizabeth presiding over a People's Revolutionary Government. There were Cuban "advisors" all over the island, just as there were Cuban troops all over Africa. Because what was lost in Vietnam was not just a war but American credibility. Do the British qualify as real "allies" to the Times? The Argentine seizure of the Falkland Islands occurred because General Galtieri had figured if the Commies were getting away with all this land-grabbing, why shouldn't he get a piece of the action? After all, if the supposed Yank superpower had no stomach to resist routine provocations from its sworn enemy, the toothless British lion certainly wouldn't muster the will for some no-account islands in the South Atlantic. "The west" as a whole was infected by America's loss of credibility. Thanks to Mrs. Thatcher, Galtieri lost his gamble, but it must have looked a surer thing in the spring of 1982, in the wake of Vietnam, and Soviet expansionism, and the humiliation of Jimmy Carter's botched rescue mission in Iran -- the helicopters in the desert, and the ayatollahs poking and prodding the corpses of American servicemen on TV.

American victory in the Cold War looks inevitable in hindsight. It didn't seem that way in the Seventies. And, as Iran reminds us, the enduring legacy of the retreat from Vietnam was the emboldening of other enemies. The forces loosed in the Middle East bedevil to this day, in Iran, and in Lebanon, which Syria invaded shortly after the fall of Saigon and after its dictator had sneeringly told Henry Kissinger, "You've betrayed Vietnam. Someday you're going to sell out Taiwan. And we're going to be around when you get tired of Israel."

President Assad understood something that too many Americans didn't. Then as now, the anti-war debate is conducted as if it's only about the place you're fighting in: Vietnam is a quagmire, Iraq is a quagmire, so get out of the quagmire. Wrong. The " Vietnam war" was about Vietnam if you had the misfortune to live in Saigon. But if you lived in Damascus and Moscow and Havana, the Vietnam war was about America: American credibility, American purpose, American will. For our enemies today, it still is. Osama bin Laden made a bet -- that, pace the T-shirt slogan, "These Colors Do Run": They ran from Vietnam, and they ran from the helicopters in the desert, and from Lebanon and Somalia -- and they will run from Iraq and Afghanistan, because that is the nature of a soft plump ersatz-superpower that coils up in the fetal position if you prick its toe. Even Republicans like Senator John Warner seem peculiarly anxious to confirm the bin Laden characterization.

Labels: America War Support, Defeatocrats, Iraq, Mark Steyn, Surrender Caucus

We wrote here about the television commercials that Freedom's Watch has produced, featuring veterans and their families, that urge Congress and the public to continue supporting the Iraq war. The commercials are well done, and convey the simple message that the Iraq war is important and winnable, and that we should allow our troops to see the mission through. The ads are appearing in the context of a blizzard of anti-war ads by left-wing groups, intended to pressure Senators and Congressmen into pulling the plug on the Iraq effort.

Freedom's Watch has placed its ads on Fox and CNN, but CNBC and MSNBC have refused to run the ads. Ari Fleischer wrote this morning on behalf of Freedom's Watch to let us know that CNBC and MSNBC have stubbornly refused to air the pro-war ads, even though they have run issue ads on other controversial topics. Freedom's Watch has written to CNBC and MSNBC to protest their decision; here is the text of that letter:

John Kelly
Senior Vice-President of NBC News Network Sales
30 Rockefeller Plaza
12th Floor
New York, NY 10112

Dear Mr. Kelly,

We understand that MSNBC and CNBC (the “Networks”) are refusing to sell advertising time to Freedom’s Watch (“FW”) to air a series of educational advertisements. It is our understanding that the purported basis for the denial is a Network policy denying access to groups that wish to sponsor advertising on controversial issues of public importance.

Given your recent history of airing such ads (see below), we must wonder if your denial to FW is a subjective decision because the network officials disagree with the FW ads’ message? If you continue to refuse to air FW’s advertisement we request an explanation of your basis in writing or station policy within two (2) days from the date above as time is of the essence.

FW has requested time on your networks to air advertisements discussing the War Against Terrorism. Your reporters and commentators discuss this issue on your programs at every hour of the day so you clearly agree this is an issue of great public importance. FW’s advertisements, to be sure, present a view of this debate that rounds out your coverage. These ads feature Iraq War Veterans and their families discussing their sacrifices in personal terms and their belief that we must allow the military time to complete its mission in Iraq and seek victory. This is a side of this issue that should not be silenced by national cable networks. We believe that rather than censor these American heroes, you should let the American public hear their story.

As noted above, it’s troubling that the Networks appear to be airing messages on issues on a selective basis. Our research indicates that your network has accepted and aired advertisements dealing with controversial issues of national importance in the recent past. For example, the Networks aired an advertisement entitled “Shameless Politicians” sponsored by Move America Forward regarding the war on terror in October 2004. In November 2006, the Networks aired advertisements sponsored by the American Medical Association entitled “Patient Voice” concerning the controversial issue of access to health care and coverage for the uninsured. During July 2007, the Networks aired advertisements sponsored by the Save Darfur Coalition. Your history of airing other issue advocacy advertisements makes the denial of FW advertisements troubling and raises the issue of whether your denial is based on an editorial disagreement with FW's message.

These ads are about important issues that will shape our national security policies for years to come. These ads present a point of view that your viewers are not now receiving.

Your viewers deserve to hear all sides of this issue so that they can make informed judgments about the future of their country.

Thank you for your prompt attention to this request. Please respond to me through Larry Weitzner at Jamestown Associates.

Very Truly Yours,

Bradley A. Blakeman
President and CEO

Freedom of speech: at some of our cable networks, you can't even buy it! We'll follow up with any response that may be forthcoming from NBC.

Labels: America War Support, Enemy Propaganda, Hearts and Minds, Media Bias, Media War, The Left

Labels: America War Support, Defeatocrats, Democrat Sabotage

Of the two simultaneous missions under way - maturing a responsible government and advancing our own strategic interests - the latter is far more important. In fact, it's vital. And on that track, we're making stunning progress. [...]

Out here in Anbar Province - long the most troubled in Iraq - the change has come so swiftly and thoroughly that it's dazzling. Marines who were under fire routinely just months ago are now directing their former enemies in battle.

Although this trend has been reported, our battlefield leaders here agree that the magnitude of the shift hasn't registered back home: Al Qaeda is on the verge of a humiliating, devastating strategic defeat - rejected by their fellow Sunni Muslims.

If we don't quit, this will not only be a huge practical win - it'll be the information victory we've been aching for.

No matter what the Middle Eastern media might say, everyone in the Arab and greater Sunni Muslim world will know that al Qaeda was driven out of Iraq by a combination of Muslims and Americans.

Think that would help al Qaeda's recruitment efforts? Even now, the terrorists have to resort to lies about their prospective missions to gain recruits.

With the sixth anniversary of 9/11 approaching, how dare we throw away so great a potential victory over those who attacked our country?

Forget the anti-war nonsense you hear. The truth is that our troops want to continue this struggle. I know. I'm here. And I'm listening to what they have to say. They're confident as never before that we're on the right path.

Should we rob them of their victory now and enhance al Qaeda by giving them a free win? How can we even contemplate quitting now?

I've been sitting down with Iraqis, too - including former enemies. They don't want us to leave. They finally cracked the code. They need us. And although they've got a range of their own goals (not all of them tending toward Jeffersonian democracy), they're unified in their hatred of al Qaeda.

Yesterday I listened as an American officer sought to restrain Iraqi security forces from attacking one of al Qaeda's last strongholds prematurely - the local rage toward al Qaeda goes deeper than any column could communicate.

If our former enemies are willing to kill our enduring enemies, why abandon them?

And it isn't just about al Qaeda, either. This conflict's now about keeping Iran from achieving hegemony over the Persian Gulf and its oil reserves - and preventing Tehran's extremist policy from tearing the Middle East apart. The Maliki government sucks, but, brother, it's still better than an Iranian proxy in Baghdad would be for our security.

Sen. Warner cares about our country and our troops. But the security of our country and the progress of our troops would both be compromised fatefully were we to announce that we're pulling out of Iraq.

Read the whole thing.

Labels: Al Qaeda, America War Support, Hearts and Minds, Iran, Surrender Caucus, The Long War

Labels: America War Support, Europe, France, Iraq

Labels: America War Support, Appeasement, Democrat Sabotage, Iraq, Surrender Caucus

Another Congressional Democrat has shifted his views on Iraq to support from opposition -- and this change has significance. Rep. Brian Baird, one of the Democrats who voted against the authorization to use military force in 2002, has now returned from Iraq convinced that we need to give General David Petraeus more time:

U.S. Rep. Brian Baird said Thursday that his recent trip to Iraq convinced him the military needs more time in the region, and that a hasty pullout would cause chaos that helps Iran and harms U.S. security.

"I believe that the decision to invade Iraq and the post-invasion management of that country were among the largest foreign-policy mistakes in the history of our nation. I voted against them, and I still think they were the right votes," Baird said in a telephone interview from Washington, D.C.

"But we're on the ground now. We have a responsibility to the Iraqi people and a strategic interest in making this work."

Baird, a five-term Democrat, voted against President Bush ordering the Iraq invasion — at a time when he was in a minority in Congress and at risk of alienating voters. He returned late Tuesday from a trip that included stops in Israel, Jordan and Iraq, where he met troops, U.S. advisers and Iraqis, whose stories have convinced him that U.S. troops must stay longer.

Baird made it plain that his change of heart is based on two very clear criteria. One, a pullback would devastate Iraq and be catastrophic to the region and our national interests. Primarily, though, Baird believes that Petraeus has made real progress. He does not want to pull out while success can still be achieved

Read the rest--it really will be interesting to see how the Dem Presidential candidates react to this (look for Hillary to move first--she will shift with any wind if she thinks it will help her get elected...).

It was also reported yesterday that Petraeus' upcoming report is supposed to be mostly positive... and that Democrats reportedly want the briefing to be away from the cameras and the public. When you are a Stalinist in a Democracy, it often becomes very difficult to hide that fact...

Labels: 2008 Presidential Race, America War Support, Defeatocrats, Hearts and Minds, Iraq, War Successes

The Surge is working. The initial success on the field by the American army is splitting the Democratic caucus in the House between those who want to Lose At Any Cost and the Weathervanes Who Follow The Polls.

Those polls are bad. Only 3% of Americans approve of the Democratic Congress’s handling of the war. Bush is at 24% in this category. Overall, Bush has better poll numbers than the Democratic Congress.

Rank-and-file Democrats already are worrying about the fate of all incumbents in 2008. They see the shift in public support. 42% now think the war was a good idea, up from 35% in May. These Democrats are tacking back.

The Rabid Dog Democrats see it too, and are upping the ante to out now. They must strike while the iron is tepid. If they wait till September, their surrender will be surrendered.

Read the rest here.

Labels: America War Support, Defeatocrats, Democrat Sabotage, Iraq

HH: Would a, John Burns, a contrary approach yield the also counterintuitive result that if Congress and the United States said we’re there for two or three more years at this level, would that assist the political settlement, in your view, coming about?

JB: Unfortunately, I think the answer to that is probably not, and that’s something that General Casey and General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker now, General Petraeus’ partner, if you will, are very wary of. They understand that there has to be something of a fire lit under the feet of the Iraqi leaders. It’s a paradox, it’s a conundrum, which is almost impossible to resolve. Now I think the last thing that you need is an Iraqi leadership which is already inclined to passivity on the matters, the questions that seem to matter most in terms of a national reconciliation here, the last thing they need is to be told, in effect, the deadline has been moved back three years. I would guess the way, if you will, to vector all of this would be to find some sort of solution, indeed it was the benchmark solution, which would say to them if you come together and you work on these benchmarks, then you will continue to have our support. But it seems to me that the mood in Congress has moved beyond that. The mood in Congress, as I read it from here, at least those who are leading the push for the withdrawal, are not much interested anymore in incremental progress by the Iraqi government. They’ve come to the conclusion that this war is lost, that no foreseeable movement by the Iraqi leaders will be enough to justify the continued investment of lives and dollars here by the United States, and that it’s time to pull out. And of course, you can make a strong argument to that effect.

[...]

HH: Now you’ve reported some very tough places, Sarajevo, Afghanistan under the Taliban, and after the liberation from the Taliban, and you’ve won Pulitzers for that. When you say cataclysmic civil war, what do you mean in terms of what you’ve seen before? What kind of violence do you imagine would break out after precipitous withdrawal?

Labels: America War Support, Hearts and Minds, Iraq, Media Bias, Media War, War Successes

As I predicted earlier in the day, the left wing blogosphere has turned on the Brookings scholars who went to Iraq and noted the results of the surge. Glenn Greenwald, a.k.a. “The Lion of Jalalabad”, penned a characteristically windy attempt at character assassination. Thankfully, Matthew Yglesias showed more brevity.

Characteristically, both pieces didn’t take issue with what Brookings-men Kenneth Pollack and Michael O’Hanlon reported seeing in Iraq but instead attacked them personally. If you’ve studied the moonbats in their native habitats as I have the past several years, this comes as no surprise. After all, what is the chickenhawk meme but an attempt to win an argument by attacking your opponent rather than engaging his ideas? Has anyone come back from Iraq recently and not seen progress? Wouldn’t an effective rebuttal of O’Hanlon’s and Pollack’s article sought out such friendly sources?

When it comes to dealing substantively with Iraq, the left has a problem. For four joyous years, the left could properly point to a series of Bush administration miscalculations and screw-ups. In spite of being the first MBA president, President Bush spent years without having his entire administration working out of the same playbook. Donald Rumsfeld wanted to topple nations, not build them. And Colin Powell – well, who knows what his shop wanted? All we know is that State’s viceroy in Baghdad, Paul Bremer, made a series of grievous miscalculations such as the disastrous DeBaathification program.

Historians will long debate how much blame President Bush will get for these blunders. War is a tough business, and even successful ones are chock-full of screw-ups. Abe Lincoln doesn’t take much of a rap in the history books for letting the inept George McClellan or the buffoonish “Fightin’ Joe” Hooker run his armies during the Civil War. The fact that he got it right by the end of the war essentially erased many of those mistakes.

Since David Petraeus came to command in Iraq, unanimously confirmed by our prescient and wise senators, have you noticed what we haven’t heard? We haven’t heard any stories of operational stumbling. We haven’t heard any stories of strategic cluelessness. We haven’t heard anything that resembles the breakdowns at Abu Ghraib or the temporizing in Fallujah. In short, General Petraeus is running things superbly in Iraq.

For some on the left, this comes as a painful development. Tales of Bush administration incompetence have become a happy staple of the left’s list of grievances against the administration. While they still have Alberto Gonzales to (rightly) carp about, things on the competence front have improved in Iraq. Dramatically.

You will want to read the rest.

Labels: America War Support, Defeatocrats, Democrat Sabotage, Surrender Caucus, War Successes

With Congress's August recess less than one week away, it should hardly come as a surprise that Rep. John Murtha, the chairman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense, is readying more legislative mischief. Mr. Murtha, a close political ally of Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, has made it clear that plans to use the $459.6 billion defense appropriations bill, which comes to the floor this week, to short-circuit the current military campaign against jihadists in Iraq and shut down the prison at Guantanamo Bay (Gitmo).

Mr. Murtha plans to offer three amendments to the fiscal 2008 defense appropriations bill: One would set a 60-day timeline to begin withdrawing troops from Iraq (which will certainly help al Qaeda and the like in planning the Rwanda-ization of the country). A second Murtha amendment would implement the Pennsylvania Democrat's "slow-bleed" strategy for ensuring a U.S. military defeat by conditioning funds for the war upon the military meeting some unattainable standards for training and equipping the troops. Should the administrate violate the strictures in an effort to reinforce besieged American soldiers or prevent genocide, we have no doubt that if the Democrats are still in the majority that they will be holding oversight hearings and issuing subpoenas to U.S. military commanders and senior Pentagon officials, summoning them to testify about "why they broke the law" by sending these soldiers to the battlefield.

Mr. Murtha's third amendment would close the Guantanamo Bay facility. He hasn't said precisely what he wants to do with these terrorists, but his Democratic colleagues have weighed in, including Rep. Jim Moran of Virginia (who has been perhaps the most fervent congressional advocate of shutting down Gitmo) as well as House Armed Services Committee Chairman Ike Skelton of Missouri and Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers of Michigan.

Messrs. Skelton and Conyers want to grant the detainees habeas corpus rights, permitting them to challenge their detentions in federal court. while Mr. Moran has suggested: 1) sending them back to their countries of origin (he doesn't specify whether these people would be turned over to security services in countries like Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, or set free to rejoin their jihadist comrades on the battlefield — something that has already happened in at least 12 cases involving prisoners released from Gitmo); or 2) imprisoning them here. By arming unlawful combatants captured on the battlefield with a panoply of rights a la American criminal defendants, the Democrats are creating a perverse incentive for foreign enemies of the United States join terrorist groups and violate the laws of war — knowing that even if they behave as barbarians, they can fight everything out in U.S. courts, represented by lawyers working with groups like the Center for Constitutional Rights.

Labels: America War Support, Defeatocrats, Democrat Sabotage, Iraq, Surrender Caucus

Viewed from Iraq, where we just spent eight days meeting with American and Iraqi military and civilian personnel, the political debate in Washington is surreal. The Bush administration has over four years lost essentially all credibility. Yet now the administration’s critics, in part as a result, seem unaware of the significant changes taking place.

Here is the most important thing Americans need to understand: We are finally getting somewhere in Iraq, at least in military terms. As two analysts who have harshly criticized the Bush administration’s miserable handling of Iraq, we were surprised by the gains we saw and the potential to produce not necessarily “victory” but a sustainable stability that both we and the Iraqis could live with.

After the furnace-like heat, the first thing you notice when you land in Baghdad is the morale of our troops. In previous trips to Iraq we often found American troops angry and frustrated — many sensed they had the wrong strategy, were using the wrong tactics and were risking their lives in pursuit of an approach that could not work.

Today, morale is high. The soldiers and marines told us they feel that they now have a superb commander in Gen. David Petraeus; they are confident in his strategy, they see real results, and they feel now they have the numbers needed to make a real difference.

Everywhere, Army and Marine units were focused on securing the Iraqi population, working with Iraqi security units, creating new political and economic arrangements at the local level and providing basic services — electricity, fuel, clean water and sanitation — to the people. Yet in each place, operations had been appropriately tailored to the specific needs of the community. As a result, civilian fatality rates are down roughly a third since the surge began — though they remain very high, underscoring how much more still needs to be done.

In Ramadi, for example, we talked with an outstanding Marine captain whose company was living in harmony in a complex with a (largely Sunni) Iraqi police company and a (largely Shiite) Iraqi Army unit. He and his men had built an Arab-style living room, where he met with the local Sunni sheiks — all formerly allies of Al Qaeda and other jihadist groups — who were now competing to secure his friendship.

In Baghdad’s Ghazaliya neighborhood, which has seen some of the worst sectarian combat, we walked a street slowly coming back to life with stores and shoppers. The Sunni residents were unhappy with the nearby police checkpoint, where Shiite officers reportedly abused them, but they seemed genuinely happy with the American soldiers and a mostly Kurdish Iraqi Army company patrolling the street. The local Sunni militia even had agreed to confine itself to its compound once the Americans and Iraqi units arrived.

We traveled to the northern cities of Tal Afar and Mosul. This is an ethnically rich area, with large numbers of Sunni Arabs, Kurds and Turkmens. American troop levels in both cities now number only in the hundreds because the Iraqis have stepped up to the plate. Reliable police officers man the checkpoints in the cities, while Iraqi Army troops cover the countryside. A local mayor told us his greatest fear was an overly rapid American departure from Iraq. All across the country, the dependability of Iraqi security forces over the long term remains a major question mark.

But for now, things look much better than before. American advisers told us that many of the corrupt and sectarian Iraqi commanders who once infested the force have been removed. The American high command assesses that more than three-quarters of the Iraqi Army battalion commanders in Baghdad are now reliable partners (at least for as long as American forces remain in Iraq).

These guys have been CRITICS of the War. And even they are now saying the tide is turning... Read the rest here.

UPDATE: Don Surber is not so sure that the NYT is salvageable. He has a point...

Meanwhile Glenn Reynolds points us to an interesting play-by-play account of a night raid in Baghdad (with photos), courtesy of embedded blogger Michael Totten. Totten writes well--you really get a feel for being right there...

Labels: America War Support, Hearts and Minds, Iraq

Labels: America War Support, Democrat Sabotage, Iraq, Military, War strategy