Renowned author and CNAS fellow Tom Ricks runs a series on his blog, The Best Defense, titled "Iraq, the unraveling." The series cherry-picks the worst stories from Iraq and is used to support his assertion that Iraq is falling apart and political reconciliation failed despite the positive effects of the surge. But stories about legitimate reconciliation are consistently ignored.

If you strictly read The Best Defense, you'd think Iraqi is indeed unraveling. One of Ricks's themes is that the government refuses to integrate the Awakening forces -- the groups of Sunni tribesmen and former insurgents who turned on al Qaeda and other terror groups. But if you closely follow the news from Iraq, you'd know the government is slowly integrating these forces into the security forces and other ministries. Today, the government announced 8,800 Awakening forces in Diyala province will be absorbed. Last week, another 3,000 Awakening fighters were hired by the government.

Perhaps Ricks is correct and Iraq will deteriorate into chaos. There are real political problems. Al Qaeda lurks in the background while Iran and Syria continue to meddle. But it is too soon to state with authority that Iraq is falling apart. Iraq's security forces have performed well in the first month largely handling security in the big cities. Prime Minister Maliki may enter into a coalition with the Awakening and has apparently made some progress with the Kurds. Perhaps a little balance is needed when assessing the situation in Iraq.

The Iraqi government, led by Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki, has agreed to reconcile with one of the most dangerous Shia terror groups in Iraq:

The prime minister, Nouri Kamal al-Maliki, met with members of the group, Asa’ib al-Haq, or the League of the Righteous, over the weekend, said Ali al-Dabbagh, a spokesman for the prime minister, confirming reports. “They decided they are no longer using violence, and we welcome them,” he said in a telephone interview.

Mr. Dabbagh first revealed the negotiations in remarks on Monday to Al Iraqiya, the state television network. “We have reached an agreement to resolve all problems, especially regarding detainees who do not have Iraqi blood on their hands,” he said. He did not say anything about British victims of the group.

Asked about that later, he added, “Whether it’s British blood or American blood, it is a violation of the law, and we will treat them no differently.”

Salam al-Maliki, the insurgent group’s liaison to the government, said in a telephone interview that the group had not renounced fighting the Americans. “Of course we want to get into the political process, because circumstances have improved, and the United States is out right now,” said Mr. Maliki, who is not related to the prime minister. “We told the government anyone who has Iraqi blood on their hands, you should keep him in jail. We are only fighting the United States.”

Asked about the British hostages, Mr. Maliki said that their status had not been discussed.

Mr. Dabbagh also said that the British hostages had not been discussed. “We cannot negotiate with the kidnappers,” he said. Referring to the hostages, he added, “We do support them coming home safely.”

The Asa’ib al-Haq was behind the kidnapping and murder of five US soldiers in Karbala in January 2007, and the subsequent kidnapping of five British contractors in Baghdad later that spring. Two of the Brits are dead (their bodies have been turned back over to British officials), and two others are strongly suspected of being killed by the Asa’ib al-Haq.

The US turned over the brother of the leader of the Asa’ib al-Haq in June, and in July, turned over a senior Qods Force officer who directed one of the three regional commands assigned to direct operations in Iraq. The officer was released under the guise of being one of the "Irbil Five," who were five low-level Qods Force officers who were not as senior or as dangerous.

The US will continue to release these high-level Iranian operatives and their Iraqi proxies. As a US intelligence official told me back in July, "you'd better get used to it."

The kicker here is that the US is not obligated to release these Iranian agents at this time. In fact, the US could push hard to hold them and for the Iraqis to make exceptions under the Status of Forces Agreement.

For instance: the US captured Abd al Hadi al Iraqi as he entered Iraq sometime in late 2006. Abd al Hadi al Iraqi is a senior al Qaeda military commander. He directed al Qaeda paramilitary forces in the Pakistan-Afghanistan border areas, and was sent to Iraq to bolster al Qaeda's operations there. What are the odds that the US will release Abd al Hadi al Iraqi, who is currently at Guantanamo Bay, to the Iraqis?

While al Qaeda in Iraq has suffered serious setbacks over the past two years, the terror group still has the capacity to carry out suicide attacks in central, northern, and western Iraq. Yesterday’s suicide attack at a military base in Habbaniyah in Anbar province is the ninth major attack in Iraq in 11 days.

Yesterday’s attack killed 18 soldiers and wounded 40 more. The day before, 11 Iraqis were killed and 23 more were wounded in a bombing in Kirkuk. Nine Awakening fighters and Iraqi soldiers were killed in a suicide attack on a checkpoint in Babil on April 9; five U.S. soldiers and two Iraqi security personnel were killed in a suicide truck bombing in Mosul on April 10; seven Iraqis were killed and 23 were wounded in a car bombing in a Shia neighborhood in Baghdad and one Iraqi was killed in a suicide attack in Fallujah on April 8; nine Iraqis were killed in car bomb attack in Baghdad on April 7; and 34 Iraqis were killed and scores were wounded in six car bombings in Baghdad and seven soldiers were wounded in a suicide attack in Dalouyia on April 6.

While the recent spike in attacks is worrisome, particularly as it comes as there are tensions over the status of the Awakening forces in Baghdad (which in my opinion are being exaggerated) and the United States is preparing to withdraw from the major cities, Al Qaeda in Iraq, the Mahdi Army, and an assortment of terror and insurgent groups have yet to reassert control of territory as it had prior to the surge in 2007, and show no signs of doing so in the near future. Outside of Mosul, Kirkuk and northern Diyala province, the fight has largely shifted from a counterinsurgency to counterterrorism.

In his confirmation hearing last week, Senator Roger Wicker asked Christopher Hill about reporting that showed he defied the wishes of President George W. Bush and the direct instructions of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in order to meet bilaterally with the North Koreans. Hill, now Barack Obama's nominee to serve as US Ambassador to Iraq, told Wicker that Rice had "agreed to have bilateral -- a bilateral meeting with the understanding that the North Koreans would then announce at the end of the bilateral meeting their participation in the six-party process. But she wanted the Chinese to be there."

But, as I pointed out in a post last week, Rice had not agreed to a bilateral meeting with North Korea. Mike Chinoy, a former CNN reporter and author of "Meltdown: The Inside Story of the North Korean Nuclear Crisis," reported on page 239 of his book:

The North Koreans made clear that, while they were open to returning to the talks, they wanted a bilateral meeting with Hill before making any announcement. Hill's problem was that Rice and other senior officials, while willing to sanction a meeting, insisted that it be trilateral, with China participating as well.

Chinoy further reported that Hill displayed "the willingness to take risks and to stretch -- if not ignore -- his instructions that would characterize his modus operandi in the coming months, Hill decided to go ahead on his own and present her with a fait accompli."

And indeed, Hill did the same thing in the fall of 2006, meeting bilaterally with the North Koreans just three weeks a North Korean nuclear test had pushed Bush to declare publicly, again, that he opposed bilateral meetings with representatives of Kim Jong Il's regime.

Hill also told Senator Wicker that he had not had a "verbal confrontation" with Secretary Rice over the issue. But in his book Chinoy described this exchange between Hill and Rice:

When Rice arrived in Beijing later that night, Hill went to her hotel suite. "The bad news," he told her, "is that the Chinese didn't show up. But the good news is that the North Koreans announced they would come back to the talks." Rice was not amused, although Hill felt that, since getting the talks under way again was one of her goals, her anger would pass.

Given the apparent contradictions -- between Hill's testimony and Chinoy's reporting -- I asked Chinoy if he stands by his reporting -- he does -- and asked if he had any further thoughts.

Chinoy writes:

There are a couple of issues here. One is the characterization of what happened. The second is the political use of the episode by a conservative senator looking for reasons to oppose Hill’s nomination as ambassador to Iraq.

As to the episode itself, a bit of context is needed.

In the summer of 2005, the US was trying to get North Korea to return to the six-party talks, which Pyongyang had been boycotting since the previous fall. The North had signaled that if its envoy could have a bilateral meeting with Hill, it would return to the talks. The official US position, pulled together in Washington in an atmosphere of constant bureaucratic infighting between so-called “hardliners” and “moderates,” was that Hill could only meet with the North Koreans with the Chinese present. The Chinese, understandably frustrated by what they saw as American obstinacy on a procedural matter that was blocking a resumption of the six-party talks, tried to square the circle by inviting both Hill and the North Koreans to a dinner in Beijing, and then, as I recount in my book "Meltdown", disappearing. This led Hill to call what he characterized in his testimony as an “audible” – deciding not to walk out of the dinner, which would have almost certainly ensured an angry North Korean reaction that would have destroyed any chance of the six-party talks resuming. Instead, he remained, and at the end of his discussion with the North Koreans, they agreed to return to the talks.

When Rice, who had been in the air en route to Beijing while this was happening, arrived in Beijing, Hill told her he had “good news and bad news.” The bad news was that the Chinese had not in the end attended the dinner, so he had met alone with the North Koreans. The good news was that they had agreed to return to the talks. Rice was not pleased, but, as I note in the book, her anger was primarily focused on the Chinese for the way they had arranged this, not on Hill himself. There was indeed a “verbal confrontation” ( Senator Wicker’s term) but it was between Rice and Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing, not, as the Senator suggests, between Hill and Rice. So Hill’s response in his testimony that he did not have a "verbal confrontation" with Rice here is accurate. Indeed, the way I describe his conversation with her in "Meltdown" is that she was "not amused" by his news, but that is very different from suggesting the two had a "confrontation."

Foreign Minister Li’s reaction to Rice’s complaint was to urge that the US focus on the outcome and not fixate on the process. And indeed, barely two months later, there was an important agreement reached at the talks, the “Sept. 19 Declaration,” which laid out a set of principles for the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula. This accord, as well as the Feb. 13, 2007 deal that Hill negotiated, the Oct. 3, 2007 deal he reached, and the decision to take Pyongyang off the US terrorism list, were all backed by President Bush and Secretary Rice.

In an administration whose North Korea policy was, as I chronicle at great length in "Meltdown," characterized by frequent flip-flops – and where the President’s own position changed significantly at various points – Hill was clearly a major player. He sought to push positions that he felt advanced the national interest by seeking a negotiated rollback of Pyongyang’s nukes, and was certainly much more than just a messenger boy to the North Koreans. But it is also worth noting that Rice and Bush did not dismiss or seriously reprimand Hill over this particular episode, or replace him with another envoy to handle the six-party talks when they resumed soon afterwards. Indeed, they saw his willingness to take some risks as useful. As a senior State Department official acknowledged to me in an interview (quoted on page 338 of "Meltdown") Bush and Rice “basically said ‘OK, fine. If Chris Hill thinks he can do it, let him do it. If he succeeds, we get the credit. If he fails, then he takes the blame and we hang him out to dry.’” So this was the game – a function of the politics in Washington - and I would argue that all the major figures- Hill, Rice, Bush – understood exactly how it was being played.

So for opponents of Hill’s nomination to Iraq to argue that the decisions Mr. Bush ultimately took in the direction of negotiation and compromise were Hill’s alone and NOT the president’s – and that this somehow means Hill was “soft” on the North Koreans, sabotaging the President’s wishes and is thus someone who cannot be trusted to represent the government and is therefore unqualified to be ambassador to Iraq – is, in my view, a huge, and unjustifiable, stretch.

A quick word, given that I am one of those making this huge and unjustifiable stretch. As I've written before, Chinoy's book is exhaustively reported and a valuable resource on the North Korean nuclear crisis. But I disagree with much of his analysis, particularly his obvious sympathies toward Hill and his rogue diplomacy.

This comes through above. Chinoy characterizes Wicker's questions as "the political use of the episode by a conservative senator looking for reasons to oppose Hill’s nomination as ambassador to Iraq." I think that's unfair to Wicker who might, of course, have reasonable concerns about a diplomat who ignores presidential policy when it doesn't suit his purposes or ambitions.

Chinoy's point about Bush and Rice -- and their refusal to dismiss Hill after his insubordination -- is a good one. They certainly should have done so sooner and they share the blame for the ultimate failure of the policy and coddling of North Korea. But the fact remains, as Chinoy's reporting (and my own) makes clear: Hill simply rejected Bush administration policy on meeting bilaterally with North Korea and, we now know, offered concession after concession to North Korea at the same time that Kim Jong Il was proliferating nuclear technology to Syria, another terror-sponsoring state.

So it's not only reasonable that people like Senator Wicker would be concerned about Hill's rogue diplomacy, it would be surprising if they were not.

John McCain met this afternoon with President Obama's nominee to serve as US Ambassador to Iraq, Christopher Hill. A McCain aide described the meeting as "productive" but noted that "questions remain."

Although McCain did not sign the letter from five of his senate colleagues today, last week he joined Senator Lindsay Graham in a statement calling for Obama to "reconsider this nomination."

“The U.S. Embassy in Baghdad is the world’s largest, and our next ambassador will take the helm at a particularly critical time in our efforts in Iraq,” McCain and Graham continued. “The next ambassador should have experience in the Middle East and in working closely with the U.S. military in counterinsurgency or counterterrorism operations. Mr. Hill has neither. Given these considerations, together with the controversial legacy Mr. Hill left in his North Korea diplomacy, we believe that the President should reconsider this nomination.”

Over the weekend, former Vice President Dick Cheney also weighed in against Hill.

Christian Brose evaluates Barack Obama's Iraq speech and points to a missed opportunity that struck me as I watched it. Obama only got to give the address he did because he was wrong about the surge. And George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, John McCain and others were right.

At the risk of heading into la-la land, I think Obama should have tipped his hat ever so slightly today to President Bush, Sen. McCain, and other Republicans who had supported the surge strategy, naming them and thanking them. Of course, there's no telling how Iraq would look today had the surge never happened, but it's likely that conditions would be pretty grim and that this withdrawal plan would have the smell of defeat to it, rather than the opposite, as it does.

Obama could have caveated this to death -- "I opposed Bush's decision to begin this war, I opposed how he sold it to America, I opposed the way he prosecuted it," etc. But he could have recognized that Bush's decision to change strategies in 2007 is in large part why the security situation in Iraq has turned around more than anyone could have hoped, why we can now begin drawing down our forces with a good measure of confidence, and why our troops now feel more and more that their sacrifice is worth it.

Not only would this have been magnanimous, it would have been smart politics. It would have acknowledged the bipartisanship that underlies the decision to begin bringing our troops home by drawing an important line of continuity through our Iraq efforts of the past two years. It would have disarmed Obama's more hawkish critics on Iraq by conceding their point on the surge and turning it into an argument for the drawdown, which it is. And it would have shown Republicans that Obama is committed not just to a bipartisanship of style but of substance -- not just being willing to recognize when the other side has valid points, but actually incorporating them into one's own thinking.

The whole post is smart.

I had some problems with the speech (see Tom Donnelly's comments below) and I am concerned that Obama's timeline locks him in to this drawdown even if conditions on the ground make it look increasingly unwise. But overall, it was a good speech. There are many on the loud-mouthed left who are too dim to understand it, but this was Bush's gift to his successor.

Yesterday on Meet the Press, David Gregory interviewed Thomas Ricks, whose new book The Gamble comes out this week. The interview was informative. I recommend watching it or reading the transcript.

But the interview was also amazingly dour and pessimistic. Last week Iraq held provincial elections that were notable for the lack of violence, the reintroduction of Sunnis into political life, and the flowering of competitive parties. Also important: the elections brought victory to nationalist and secular parties at the expense of the Sadrists and the Iran-friendly SCIRI party. These elections were a uniform success. You can read Reuel Marc Gerecht's take on them here.

Did Gregory ask Ricks about the provincial elections? No. Did Ricks talk about them? Nope. He mentioned elections only once, in this sentence:

This, this year we're in now, '09, is going to be, I think, a, a surprisingly tough year. You've got a series of elections in Iraq. Meanwhile, you've got American troops declining. General Odierno says in the book that the really dangerous withdrawals come at the end of this year. We're doing the easy troop withdrawals now, but down the road you start taking them out of areas that aren't so secure, that aren't so safe, that you're, that you're worried about. So they're going to be holding national elections in Iraq just when we have fewer troops there.

There are still a lot of challenges ahead in Iraq. But you'd think that one of our foremost experts on military affairs, and the host of the premier Sunday public affairs show, would be willing to acknowledge our recent successes.

The New York Times seemingly dropped a bombshell this morning, reporting that Iraq's Counter-Intelligence Bureau, which is exclusively under the command of Prime Minister Maliki, rounded up 35 Interior Ministry officials, including a senior general. The officials, according to the New York Times, were involved in a coup attempt organized by Al Adwa, a Baathist holdout group. Major General Ahmed Abu Raqeef, the Interior Ministry’s director of internal affairs, which is in charge of cleaning up corruption within the ministry, was reported to have been one of those detained.

But within 24 hours, the story has begun to fall apart. Major General Raqeef was not one of those detained, Voices of Iraq reported. In fact, he was one of those conducting the arrests. And 24, and not 34 officials from Interior and other ministries were rounded up.

Nibras Kazimi, a Visiting Scholar at the Hudson Institute, sniffed this one out early, noting that it was highly unlikely that Major General Raqeef would be part of a Baathist conspiracy. Raqeef has a reputation for being "squeaky clean," so his involvement in the arrests would indicate there is something significant behind the arrests.

We shouldn't be surprised that corrupt or compromised officials and officers exist inside Iraq's ministries. For example, in the Interior Ministry from 2006 to 2007, three Iraqi National Police division commanders, 7 brigade commanders and 14 battalion commanders were relieved of duty for corruption or associations with the insurgency or militias. Iraq is a society emerging from 30 years under the boot of a brutal dictator and five plus years of a violent insurgency. Corrupt and compromised officials and officers will succeed in infiltrating Iraq's security services.

The New York Times has already issued a correction on Major General Raqeef's arrest. It will be interesting to see if they follow this story up and tell us what really happened.

For the past year, we've been inundated with news of radical Iraqi cleric Muqtada al Sadr's power and influence. Last year, the American Spectator's George H. Wittman asked if Sadr was a kingmaker or a king. This spring, just days after the fighting in Basrah began, Time magazine's Charles Crain wrote an article explaining how Muqtada al Sadr won in Basrah.

Just before the fighting against the Mahdi Army began in lat March, Patrick Cockburn, The Independent's Middle East correspondent, lauded Sadr by saying the Shia "regard Muqtada as a sort of god." Sadr plays "a very critical role" in Iraqi politics, Cockburn told us. He is "the biggest Shia leader with the most popular support. If there were elections tomorrow he would probably sweep Shia Baghdad and most of the south."

How quickly the narrative on Sadr has changed. Today, the Washington Post describes a weakened Sadr, with a near-toothless political movement, struggling to find its path after suffering a stinging defeat after the passage of the Status of Forces agreement between the United States and Iraq.

The day after the agreement's passage, anger lined the face of Hazim al-Araji, Sadr's top aide. Inside a gold-domed shrine in Baghdad's Kadhimiyah neighborhood, he railed against Iraq's lawmakers. "They ignored our ideas and thoughts when they signed this agreement," he said from his pulpit. "They paid no attention to all our martyrs who gave their blood fighting the occupation."

Araji, 39, stands at the center of Sadr's efforts to shape his followers into a religious and social movement that can maintain his popularity. In interviews across Baghdad and in the Shiite religious heartland of Najaf, where Shiite groups are vying for their community's leadership, Sadrists insist they still have the power to divide Iraq or keep it together.

Melding Koranic verse with political invective, Araji urged the crowd to resist the pact and their movement's foes. "Iraq has been killed! Iraq has been sold!" he thundered. "America is now the enemy of God."

The congregation of a few thousand was smaller than usual, a sign of the Sadrists' uncertain future.

The decline in Sadr's power and influence began long before the Iraqi government's offensive to drive his Mahdi Army from the streets of Basrah, Baghdad, and the cities of central and southern Iraq. Despite media accounts to the contrary, Sadr declared a six-month ceasefire in Najaf in August 2007 because his forces suffered a stinging defeat at the hands of the Iraqi security forces when his thuggish Mahdi Army initiated fighting during a religious festival. Despite the ceasefire, U.S. and Iraqi forces continued to dismantle Sadr's Iranian-backed Mahdi Army. In February, Sadr renewed the ceasefire as Iraqi and U.S. forces stepped up pressure and targeted senior Mahdi Army ands Sadrist leaders.

Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki became overconfident and jumped the gun in late March, launching an offensive to clear besieged Basrah of the Mahdi Army. The initial offensive stumbled, but elite Iraqi units, more than a division's worth, were rushed to Basrah. Sadr soon capitulated. The fighting spread to Sadr City, but the Mahdi Army relented after suffering staggering casualties during six weeks of fighting. Sadr then ordered the disbandment of the Mahdi Army and pulled the Sadrist movement from the upcoming election. Still, Iraqi security forces pressed against the Mahdi Army in southern and central Iraq.

Sadr's militia was systematically being taken apart for well over a year, and his political capital started to wane during that time. The vote over the status of forces agreements showed just how isolated and out of the mainstream the Sadrist movement is in Iraqi politics. Of the 199 votes cast, 149 voted for the agreement, 35 voted against, and 15 abstained. Thirty of the votes against the agreement came from the Sadrist bloc. All of the signs of the demise of Sadr and his movement have been there. The media either missed it, or chose to ignore it, until now.

On Capitol Hill, Joe Lieberman and Lindsey Graham are urging their colleagues to adopt a bipartisan resolution that recognizes the success of the surge. Say the senators in part:

It was exactly one year ago today that General David Petraeus returned to Capitol Hill to testify before Congress about the progress of the surge in Iraq. At the time, many members of the Senate argued that the surge -- despite growing evidence of its success -- was not working and should be abandoned. One left-wing group, Moveon.org, even made the despicable and outrageous accusation that General Petraeus would try to 'cook the books' to justify the surge when he appeared before Congress.

One year later, it is clear: the critics of the surge were wrong… Because of the strategic success of the surge, more and more American troops are coming home, not in defeat, but in honor.

Given that even Barack Obama pronounced the surge a wild success over the weekend, one would assume that passage of the resolution won’t be a problem. Chortle.

In spite of likely Democratic stubbornness, the facts on the ground bear eloquent testimony to the surge’s success. Pre-surge, at the war’s nadir, a bad month would see over 3,000 Iraqi civilian casualties. Last month, according to the website Icasualties.org, there were 311 Iraqi civilian fatalities due to violence. August was the fifth straight month in which that number hit an all time low. So far in September, there have been 68 casualties, a rate which improves on August’s.

It’s also important to distinguish between the types of violence that Iraq saw and is now seeing. As war correspondents like Bartle Bull and Michael Yon have noted, Iraq used to be embroiled in a civil war. The civilian casualties during the war’s darkest days were a result of that civil war. Thanks to the surge, the civil war has since been decided – at least for the moment. The remaining violence is the work of criminals, not men with serious hopes of taking over a nation.

As for American casualties, those numbers are also down sharply since the pre-surge days and at their lowest point of the war. August saw 12 Americans killed in action; July saw 8. At the war’s nadir, those numbers were over 100 per month.

Still, caution is appropriate. Lieberman and Graham put it this way in their press release:

In withdrawing our troops from Iraq, however, it is critical that we do not jeopardize the hard-won gains they have achieved. That means any withdrawal must be based on the recommendations of General Petraeus and our commanders on the ground, not on an arbitrary timeline invented in Washington. Our brave military has fought too hard, and sacrificed too much, for American politicians to throw away the gains they have achieved with an arbitrary timeline.

What is needed now, therefore, is not more partisan politics over Iraq, but for Democrats and Republicans alike to come together and recognize reality: to acknowledge that the surge was not just a tactical success but a strategic success; to give thanks to our courageous men and women in uniform who made it possible; and to pledge that we will do nothing that might squander these hard-won gains.

The latest Rasmussen poll shows the public’s perception of the Iraq War has changed dramatically. Last summer, 27% of poll respondents thought history would consider the war a success while 56% felt the opposite. Today, 37% think it will go down as a success while 41% think it will go down as a failure.

Of course, built into those numbers is the somewhat common feeling that the war should never have been started in the first place. While some politicians would like to spend most of their time relitigating the events of 2003, that activity while potentially (though dubiously) of political use does nothing to help determine the proper way forward. Ideally, the changes on the ground in Iraq would have long since caused Democratic politicians to try to play a more constructive role than mindlessly braying about ending the war. Returning from Fantasy World, we are dealing with a party that literally until weeks ago wanted to label the surge a failure. Politics will likely come first.

But there, too, we have cause for hope. The new polling on Iraq should show the Democratic party that using the war as a convenient piñata is just so 2007. Supporting the troops and winning the war were always the right thing to do. Now they’re the politically smart thing to do as well.

In the copious interviews that Bob Woodward has given promoting his new book, The War Within: Secret White House History 2006-2008, he has put forward a new reason meant to explain the success of U.S. forces in Iraq since January 2007: a “secret program” that the military used to kill terrorists. In a recent CNN interview, he compared this program to the Manhattan Project. As CNN reports, “Woodward disclosed the existence of secret operational capabilities developed by the military to locate, target and kill leaders of al Qaeda in Iraq and other insurgent leaders.”

Woodward promises that “some day in history” the full details of the United States's top-secret enhanced operational capabilities will be “be described to people’s amazement.”

Generally the turnaround in Iraq has been attributed to the troop “surge,” the shift in American strategy toward classical counterinsurgency operations, and the emergence of such local allies as the Iraqi Awakening movement. Does Woodward have his finger on a new explanation that has heretofore been overlooked?

On Tuesday, a senior U.S. military intelligence officer provided me with the following skeptical analysis of Woodward’s claims:

I have been asking around to a lot of people in military circles who are in a position to know about Woodward’s claims ever since his book officially came out. To make a long story short, none of these people, many of whom served in Iraq during 2006, 2007, and 2008, and are still there, have even the slightest idea what he is talking about when he compares whatever he thinks JSOC and SOCOM did in 2007 to the Manhattan Project during World War II. Without getting into any specifics, the techniques that we use to hunt down and kill HVTs [high-value terrorists] did not change significantly between June 2006 when we killed Zarqawi and January 2007 when Operation FARD AL-QANOON began. I am somewhat perplexed at this point as to just who told Woodward this that led him to adopt this view with such fervor, since it is nothing short of a mystery to many of the people involved with either the Awakening or the surge, which were the two major shifts by US and Iraqi forces on the ground that allowed for a reduction in violence.

Given that a lot of what passes for serious discussion on Iraq in the US popular perception is a mixture of misunderstanding, kabuki, and domestic political tribalism, I’m not too surprised that many policy-makers misunderstand the reasons why violence went down or the dynamics behind them. That said, I really do hope that no politician or prominent analyst starts adopting the position that the reduction of violence has less to do with the counterinsurgency theories of David Galula or the Awakening leadership but were instead due to the utilization of some magical new weaponry by our special ops teams. There are very dangerous consequences to such lines of thought, particularly when we are talking about how to deal with the situation in Pakistan.

At Commentary's website, Peter Wehner responds to Bob Woodward's take on the surge.

Good news out of Iraq, via Reuters:

The U.S. military handed over Iraq's Anbar province to Iraqi security forces on Monday, less than two years after it almost lost the western region to a Sunni Arab insurgency.

"We are in the last ten yards of this terrible fight. The goal is very near," Major-General John Kelly, commander of U.S. forces in Anbar, told U.S., Iraqi and tribal officials gathered near Anbar's government headquarters.

"Your lives and the lives of your children depend on victory."

Kelly and Anbar Governor Mamun Sami Rasheed embraced after signing a document making Anbar the 11th of Iraq's 18 provinces, and the first Sunni Arab province, to be returned to Iraqi control since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion to oust Saddam Hussein. ...

Some 382 Iraqi civilians were killed in August, Iraqi government figures showed, far below the more than 1,770 killed in August 2007.

Violence against U.S. troops has also dropped over the last year. Eleven U.S. soldiers were killed in combat in Iraq in August, according to independent Web site www.icasualties.org, up from six in July. In August 2007, 56 U.S. troops and four British soldiers were killed in combat.

Ed Morrissey notes that the Iraq police force in Anbar has grown seven times larger than it was before the surge:

Before the surge, Anbar had 5,000 police officers, and the mainly Shi’ite Iraqi Army couldn’t hold its positions in the primarily Sunni province. Now Anbar employs over 37,000 police officers, and a more balanced military has built trust with the local Sunni population, thanks to the assistance of the Americans. ...

American forces will start leaving Anbar, either for more contentious areas (like Diyala), Afghanistan, or home. They are leaving Anbar in victory, rather than being forced to retreat in defeat by politicians who wanted to run rather than fight. The people of Anbar and Iraq understand the difference, and can now control their own destiny rather than live as slaves to the lunatics of AQI.

The Mile High city isn't noted for its living arts, but it is home to a production called Iraq War: The Musical.

I'd love to see it, but unfortunately performances are suspended this week and won't resume until Friday. But to give you a taste of what it seems to be about, here's the promotional squib:

A Denver original musical comedy based on the true story of the false stories. All the lies, war-profiteering and hidden history behind the war in a nice, funny, singing and dancing package! The Bush administration faces many obstacles to get their never-ending war going, but they've got a few tricks up their sleeves! Whether they're keeping Americans in fear, making false connections, dealing with the pesky United Nations and press, keeping their contractor buddies rich, or taking care not to catch Osama, these rascals have plenty of things to keep them in a world of crazy high jinks! And Saddam, Osama and Blair are along for the wacky ride! You never will have laughed so hard at something which makes you so angry. It's therapeutic! It's the cure for DNC fever! It's Iraq War, The Musical!

Byron York reports that President Bush announced today:

The progress in Iraq has allowed us to continue our policy of "return on success." We now have brought home all five of the combat brigades and the three Marine units that were sent to Iraq as part of the surge. The last of these surge brigades returned home this month. And later this year, General Petraeus will present me his recommendations on future troop levels — including further reductions in our combat forces as conditions permit.

As part of the "return on success" policy, we are also reducing the length of combat tours in Iraq. Beginning tomorrow, troops deploying to Iraq will serve 12-month tours instead of 15-month tours. This will ease the burden on our forces — and it will make life easier for our wonderful military families.

On Good Morning America, ABC's Martha Raddatz reported on the feasibility of Barack Obama's 16-month withdrawal plan. Among the troops and commanders she interviewed in Iraq, there's universal agreement that withdrawing in 16 months is dangerous and unworkable.

RADDATZ: Do you think it's dangerous to pull out if it's not conditions based?

MAJ GEN HAMMOND: I think it's very dangerous....

RADDATZ: It is that phrase "sustainable security" that we heard again and again in Iraq from officers on the streets of Baghdad.

OFFICER: That would be conditions based.

OFFICER 2: We're thinking in terms of accomplishing the mission.

OFFICER 3: You can't put a timetable on it.

RADDATZ: To senior officers.

LT GEN LLOYD AUSTIN: What I'm focused on right now is helping the Iraqi people, the Iraqi government achieve sustainable security.

Raddatz ended her report by asking, "So could the military manage the pace that Barack Obama has suggested? Several commanders we talked to off camera said, no way."

Hat Tip: The McCain Report

Politico's Jonathan Martin links to Barack Obama's interview with the Military Times. In the interview Obama said,

If current trends continue and we’re in a position where we continue to see reductions in violence and stabilizations and continue to see some improvements on the part of the Iraqi army and Iraqi police, then you know my hope would be that we could draw down in a deliberate fashion in consultation with the Iraqi government, at a pace that is determined in consultation with General Petraeus and the other commanders on the ground and it strikes me that that’s something we can begin relatively soon after inauguration. If on the other hand you’ve got a deteriorating situation for some reason then that’s going to have to be taken into account.

As Martin says, Obama's language is quite "unambiguous."

A Quinnipiac poll shows that majorities in Wisconsin, Minnesota, Michigan, and Colorado oppose withdrawing all troops within 18 months. Obama plans to withdraw all combat troops in 16 months.

Earlier this week, an AP poll found that voters think McCain would handle the war better than Obama. The McCain Report predicts the mother of all flip-flops from Obama on Iraq within the next month.

Terrorists in Al Qaeda's "last urban stronghold" in Iraq are without a leader:

The US military in Iraq says a militant killed on Tuesday has been positively identified as the leader of al-Qaeda in the city of Mosul. It said the man - identified by a pseudonym, Abu Khalaf -- had co-ordinated and ordered many attacks. He was shot dead by American troops during a raid on a building in Mosul.

Thomas Friedman writes in the New York Times on the progress of the Iraqi army and government:

What seems to have happened in Iraq in the last few months is that the Iraqi mainstream has finally done some liberating of itself. With the help of the troop surge ordered by President Bush, the mainstream Sunni tribes have liberated themselves from the grip of Al Qaeda in their provinces. And the Shiite mainstream — represented by Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and the Iraqi Army — liberated Basra, Amara and Sadr City in Baghdad from both Mahdi Army militiamen and pro-Iranian death squads.

Friedman deserves credit for accurately reporting that the Iraqis are standing up for themselves, but then he writes: "We may one day look back on this as Iraq’s real war of liberation. The one we led five years ago didn’t count."

Really? The U.S.-led war that deposed Saddam Hussein "didn't count" as "Iraq's real war of liberation"? Was it a fake war of liberation?

Apparently Friedman thinks it didn't count because the Iraqis didn't liberate themselves and therefore felt humiliated. And humiliation, according to Friedman, is "the single-most underestimated force in international relations, especially in the Middle East." But do we really know that most Iraqis view the sacrifice of Coalition troops with a sense of humiliation rather than a sense of gratitude?

Moreover, why does Friedman think the Iraqis' feelings determine whether the war was a war of liberation?

As McCormack notes below, American Prospect wunderkind Ezra Klein made an astonishing assertion regarding the surge yesterday:

The argument over the surge was never an argument positing that more troops couldn't lead to less violence. Folks forget this, but the surge was actually part of Howard Dean's 2004 candidacy, when he was running as an anti-war candidate. In June 2003, on Meet the Press, he said, "I can tell you one thing, though. We need more troops in Afghanistan. We need more troops in Iraq now." I disagreed with him, but that was the plan: More troops, leading to less violence, leading to withdrawal. It was a plan that Democrats, even liberal Democrats, supported. Would Brooks like to credit Dean as a military visionary?

Before charging forward, I should mention that a while ago I swore to ignore Klein’s commentary, regardless of how counterfactual or juvenile it was. I made this commitment at roughly the same time I vowed to stop knocking the walkers out from under enfeebled old ladies as they crossed the street in front of my house. I had come to the realization that picking on the lame and defenseless was wrong.

But Klein’s commentary here requires a response. The Democrats, all of them except Joe Lieberman, spent the months leading up to the surge and initial months of the surge pronouncing it a hopeless failure. On April 18, 2007, months before the surge had even been fully implemented, no less a military authority than Harry Reid declared, “This war is lost, and this surge is not accomplishing anything.”

When Klein is saying the Democrats supported the introduction of more troops to Iraq, he is grossly distorting what actually happened. When Democrats and war opponents referred to more troops, they did so in only one context – they insisted that it would take roughly a half million more troops to make a dent in Iraq. If you don’t believe me, scroll through the archives of Andrew Sullivan, who was a reliable warehouse of anti-surge talking points back in the day.

Because adding half a million troops to the theatre was undoable, the next logical step for Democrats was to insist on retreat and surrender. It’s particularly ironic (and likely disingenuous) that Klein cites Howard Dean as a far-seeing lefty hawk. The whole thrust of Dean’s insurgent 2004 campaign was that he alone among the Democratic candidates wanted to withdraw from Iraq immediately.

Have American Prospect staffers really forgotten all that “I’m from the Democratic wing of the Democratic party” stuff? Have they forgotten the halcyon days when lefties, in an unfortunate act of Lakoffian framing, tirelessly endeavored to rebrand the surge as “the escalation?” Contra Klein, It was never Howard Dean’s “plan” to put more troops in Iraq. Rather, it was his intellectual construct that we needed a lot more troops and since we didn’t have them available, the war had been lost.

Of course, Klein probably hasn’t entered this thicket to rehabilitate Howard Dean’s reputation as a military strategist. After all, there’s another Democrat whose military strategist bona fides are far more in need of buffing.

Barack Obama, again as McCormack points out below, went on record saying the surge wouldn’t work. His rationale? The number of new troops was barely significant. Since Obama has based so much of his campaign on his purportedly magnificent judgment, blowing this major call stabs at the heart of his candidacy. After all, if Obama wins, he will be a wartime president whether he likes it or not. In the event of an Obama victory, we can only hope his future judgment on military issues proves better informed than his past judgment.

Of course, while belittling the surge’s prospects, Obama did what he nearly always does – he repeated trite liberal talking points as if they were hard and solid facts. Whether he actually paused to understand the nuances of the surge before dismissing it is doubtful. In his defense, what would have been the sense of mastering the details himself since renowned military experts like Harry Reid and the New York Times editorial board had already rendered their judgment?

During the early months of 2006, I spent a great deal of time blogging about a book called “Learning to Eat Soup With a Knife” by Lt. Col. John Nagl. It was a how-to guide to counterinsurgency. When Lt. Pete Hegseth, who now heads the outstanding organization Vets for Freedom, went to fight in Iraq in early 2006, he brought a copy of “Learning to Eat Soup With a Knife” (which he had discovered on his own) with him. My point isn’t that I was super-bright or that Pete was super-bright, although Pete is, having overcome his Princeton education rather nicely. My point is that the way forward in Iraq was out there long before the surge began. And the heart of the surge wasn’t the additional troops but a change in tactics to focus on counterinsurgency and away from force protection. Intellectually curious Democrats could have found this doctrine just as the Bush administration eventually (and belatedly) did.

And yet the Democrats whined, “We need more troops” in mantra like fashion, meaning not that the surge would be a success but that the additional "surge" troops in Iraq would be insignificant. Barack Obama’s comment at the time captured the prevailing lefty sentiment rather well: “I am not persuaded that 20,000 additional troops in Iraq is going to solve the sectarian violence there. In fact, I think it will do the reverse.”

Wow! What judgment!

ADDENDUM: It wasn't so long ago when Democrats referred to the surge as "the McCain Surge." This was not done out of bipartisanship, and neither was it a show of respect for the single membr of congress who did the most to make the surge a reality. It was yet another way the Democrats expressed their supreme confidence that the surge would fail.

Nevertheless, I guess we're all surge proponents now.

Ezra Klein writes: "the argument over the surge was never an argument positing that more troops couldn't lead to less violence."

Not true.

On January 10, 2007, Barack Obama argued: "I am not persuaded that 20,000 additional troops in Iraq is going to solve the sectarian violence there. In fact, I think it will do the reverse."

Yesterday Lieutenant Andrew Grayson became the sixth U.S. soldier exonerated of any wrongdoing in an incident at Haditha in 2005. Grayson is the first Marine tried for his alleged transgressions; two others will face trial later this year:

Eight military personnel were originally charged over the incident--four soldiers faced murder charges and four officers, including Grayson, were accused of covering up and failing to properly investigate the killings.

However, since charges were first announced in December 2006, prosecutors have struggled to make the allegations stick.

Six have now had charges against them dropped, while charges of murder against squad leader Frank Wuterich were changed to the lesser offense of manslaughter.

House Chairman John Murtha (D-PA) -- himself an ex-Marine -- was quick to find the accused guilty when these accusations first came to light. As Joe Eule points out, Murtha initially said that troops had “overreacted because of the pressure on them." He later had this exchange with Chris Matthews:

MATTHEWS: Was this My Lai? Was this a case of--when you say cold-blooded Congressman, a lot of people think you’re basically saying you got some civilians sitting in a room around a field and they’re executed

MURTHA: That’s exactly it.

So far it's at least six servicemen slandered by Murtha, without an apology. He seems to be holding out hope that at least one American soldier is found guilty of being a cold-blooded killer.

A sign of reconciliation in Iraq:

Some 800 Sunni Muslims are among 2,000 newly trained recruits in the Iraqi National Police, a force that a Pentagon report a year ago called a brutal organization infiltrated by Shiite militias and even death squads.

Another 2,000 Sunnis are expected to be trained and to join the National Police in coming months, a U.S. general in Iraq said Thursday...

[Army Brigadier General David Phillips] said the efforts to include more Sunnis in the National Police would be used to help newly trained units "stand up" in such crucial areas as Mosul, Salahuddin, Samarra and al Anbar province, at various times the scenes of bitter sectarian battles and attacks on U.S. forces.

I believe this is the Pentagon report referenced by McClatchy. It's actually an independent assessment prepared by a team of experts at the mandate of Congress, and released in September 2007. The report painted a grim picture of how the National Police Force was regarded less than a year ago, and concluded (page 115):

The National Police have proven operationally ineffective. Sectarianism in its units undermines its ability to provide security; the force is not viable in its current form. The National Police should be disbanded and reorganized.

The unit has come a long way in a year.

A common narrative about the war in Iraq is that fighting against the enemy in urban environments creates more insurgents, thus it is fruitless to even try. But today's Los Angeles Times finally asked Iraqis in Sadr City what they think about the recent fighting and how it impacts their views of the Mahdi Army. The answer: The Mahdi Army has lost significant support from not only residents caught in the crossfire, but from Mahdi Army fighters themselves.

In fact, some Mahdi Army fighters were so discouraged by the recent fighting that they vowed to never join the ranks again. "I had faith. I believed in something," a former Mahdi Army fighter told the LA Times. "Now, I will never fight with them."

"People are fed up with them [the Mahdi Army] because of their extremism and the problems they are causing," a merchant in central Baghdad said. The situation was so bad that the Sadrist movement was forced to sue for a cease-fire.

It's a public relations problem that even some Mahdi Army members acknowledge, and a fragile truce reached by Sadr and the Iraqi government this month, which allowed Iraqi troops to deploy into Sadr City, suggested that at least privately, Sadr's political wing recognized the need to back down from the fighting.

We're constantly being told that the fighting in Sadr City has ended in a stalemate at best, or was a failure for the Iraqi government and military as the Mahdi Army has lived to fight another day. But the attitudes of the Iraqis in Sadr City and in surrounding Shia areas paint a different picture.

These developments would not be a surprise to the readers of The Long War Journal. Bill Ardolino was embedded with U.S. forces in the Rusafa District, which abuts Sadr City, several weeks ago. During patrols in the markets with U.S. forces and the Sons of Iraq, he interviewed several locals about their views on the Mahdi Army. The Shia still feared the Mahdi Army, but were fed up with the militia and the fighting was only causing them to lose support.

When April proved a bloody month for American soldiers in Iraq, the American left swarmed. 52 U.S. soldiers died in April, the most since September 2007, and the left rushed to express its special brand of concern for “the children” as it so often patronizingly refers to our fighting men and women.

Given the promising events of May so far and the left’s silence regarding those events, one has to question the sincerity of the left’s “concern.” With May almost complete, the count of American fatalities stands at 18. Also worth noting is the fact that Iraqi civilian death count stands at 436. The figure for April was 744.

To measure the progress our military has made, it’s better still to look back a year when the Surge and its accompanying change in tactics and strategy were taking effect. In April and May of 2007, we averaged 115 deaths while 1900 Iraqi civilians were dying violently each month. (At the war’s nadir in September ’06, over 3,000 Iraqis died violently.) So in the past 12 months, by the most important metrics, violence in Iraq has dropped over 75% while the Iraqi government has strengthened itself immeasurably.

Needless to say, left wing blogs and the Democratic party have found the May figures much less interesting than the ones from April. Of course, one wouldn’t expect the left to cheer our obvious progress. For many liberals, antipathy to the Iraq war has led them to transparently hope for the war’s failure and to turn every American setback into grist for a particularly ugly propaganda mill. Nevertheless, one would still expect the left to at least acknowledge the progress and somehow jam the facts on the ground into its rickety intellectual construct.

In this regard, the anti-war media has actually been ahead of Democratic politicians. Often fulsome war opponent Andrew Sullivan has mentioned encouraging signs from Iraq on his blog and appears to be open to revisiting his views on Iraq as the improving situation warrants. Even the New York Times has published stories that paint a picture of Iraq different from the traditional grim portrait. But to my knowledge, not a single prominent Democrat has acknowledged the improving situation in Iraq. And no, Joe Lieberman doesn’t count.

None of this is to say that the 18 American fatalities so far this month or the 436 Iraqi deaths are acceptable. Like many people who support the war publicly, I’m in touch with a number of soldiers who have been to Iraq or who are in Iraq or who are going to Iraq. The death count for me is more than an abstraction. Can the same possibly be true for the vultures of the left who so boisterously crowed over the number of casualties in April and yet who have been silent in May?

For those of us who support the mission in Iraq, there’s always a reluctance to highlight good news out of Iraq. This war has already suffered from too much over-promising and under-delivering. We also realize that the situation in Iraq is still dangerous, and that the enemy always has a vote. Our soldiers there remain very much in harm’s way, and no one wants to gloss over that fact. Doing so would diminish our military’s service and valor, while also misleading the public.

Sadly but predictably, it’s becoming increasingly apparent that the left and its leadership class in particular are apparently unbound by any such scruples. Our Matthew Continetti put it well in this week’s editorial:

The Iraqi army and government have done exactly what Democrats have asked of it, and the Democrats remain hostile. Their disdain and animosity has not diminished one iota. Nor has their desire to abandon Iraq to a grim fate. We keep hearing that this year's presidential election will be about judgment. If so: advantage McCain. For when it comes to the surge, not only have Obama and his party been in error; they have been inflexible in error. They have been so committed to a false narrative of American defeat that they cannot acknowledge the progress that has been made on the ground. That isn't judgment. It's inanity.

(All figures from icasualties.org)

With the Iraqi Army's push into Sadr City after Muqtada al Sadr blinked and cut a deal with the government, the narrative on failure in Iraq has shifted. The latest story from the Associated Press indicates that Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani has secretly issued fatwas, or religious edicts, to select individuals that would allow them to conduct attacks on Coalition forces.

So far, al-Sistani's fatwas have been limited to a handful of people. They also were issued verbally and in private — rather than a blanket proclamation to the general Shiite population — according to three prominent Shiite officials in regular contact with al-Sistani as well as two followers who received the edicts in Najaf.

All spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject.

While this certainly isn't beyond the realm of possibility, I have spoken to several US intelligence sources who think this is highly unlikely. The primary reason is that one of the groups cited in the article, the Jund al Marjaiyah, which means the Soldiers of the Religious Authorities or Army of the Marja, essentially serve as "the Shia version of the Swiss Guard for Sistani's religious circle." This means their purpose is to protect the religious sites and the senior leadership of Sistani's circle. If the Jund al Marjaiyah starts to conduct attacks on Coalition forces, this would invite reprisals and directly endanger the senior leadership and religious sites.

All of the sources believe the Associated Press may have been fooled by Sadrist members purporting to be close to Sistani. "It is not unheard for Iraqi Shiites to secretly claim Sistani's blessings," one source said. "We have seen Sadrists put words in Sistani's mouth," he added, noting that this happened when Sadrists claimed Sistani and other senior Shia clerics told Sadr to keep the Mahdi Army after Prime Minister Maliki ordered the Mahdi Army to disband.

The media often falls for this type of trick. Take this article today in the AP, where a monitor for the Sadr City ceasefire is saying the Iraqi Army is violating the truce and assaulting and mistreating Iraqis in the Mahdi Army stronghold. The AP cites Mohannad al Gharawi but does not tell you who he is. A quick search will tell you that Mohannad al Gharawi is a member of the Sadrist movement, which has a vested interest in making such claims.

Back to the Sistani piece, the Associate Press relies on none other than Juan Cole for analysis and predictions. Cole certainly takes the word of the AP's anonymous sources as gospel and predicts Sistani will organize an uprising. "'Al Sistani clearly will give a fatwa against the occupation by a year or two,' but he said it would be 'premature' for the cleric to do so now."

Cole has fallen flat on his face with predictions such as this in the past. Last year, Cole's coblogger Barnett Rubin predicted an imminent attack by the U.S. military against Iran, a prediction which Cole continued to insist was "perfectly accurate" some five months later. Of course, this never came to pass, and Cole is never held to account for his repeated failures to properly predict the course of events in an area in which he is purported to be an expert.

Finally, the article just flat out contradicts Sistani's role in Iraqi politics since the U.S. invasion in 2003. Sistani has repeatedly avoided interjecting himself into the political sphere. This is in line with his "quietist" approach to Islam. The quietist approach says that the form of government is not important to Shia Islam, just as long as the followers are free to practice their religion. The Iraqi government has sanctioned the presence of U.S. forces. There is no U.S. occupation government in the model of the Bremer viceroyship that existed for roughly the first year after the invasion, but an elected Iraqi government that Sistani has not opposed. So Sistani's secret edicts would go against his own teachings.

Sistani has kept silent during some of the most critical periods in recent Iraqi history, including when the sectarian violence was at its height and Iraq was in danger of breaking apart. It isn't impossible that Sistani has issued secretive fatwas to kill U.S. and Coalition forces, but with nothing but blind quotes to substantiate the report, it seems extremely unlikely.

Update:

IraqSlogger reports that senior clerics in Sistani's organization dispute the claims:

Sources close to prominent Shi'a clerics in Najaf have expressed "surprise" at reports in the Western media which claim that Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani has issued religious opinions suggesting support of armed resistance against the foreign forces in Iraq, going so far as to dismiss the reported rulings as "false," according to a report by an online Iraqi news agency.

Al-Malaf Press writes in Arabic that "Reliable, well-placed sources in the offices of four high-ranking Shi'a clerics in Iraq denied what was reported" regarding "fatwas" (religious opinions) issued by the Shi'a ayatollah Ali al-Sistani on the matter of armed resistance in Iraq against the foreign forces in the country.

...

One source in the office of Muhammad Sa'id al-Hakim contacted by al-Malaf Press threatened to hold responsible those "airing false fatwas." The source said that fatwas that do not bear Sistani's seal or signature are considered false.

The same source told al-Malaf Press that the reports of the pro-resistance Sistani fatwas were "media stunts" intended to "effect confusion" among the Shi'a community.

With special thanks to IraqSlogger's Eason Jordan for making the full article viewable to non-subscribers.

During General David Petreaus’ confirmation hearing for his appointment as CENTCOM commander, he released the latest statistics on the violence levels in Iraq (click the image to view a larger version). The data shows that the attack incident levels have largely remained constant since September 2007, when the ‘surge’ was in full effect. The spike seen from the end of March up until the beginning of May represents the recent fighting against the Mahdi Army in Basra, Sadr City in Baghdad, and the wider South, as well as an operation against al Qaeda in Mosul.

The Basra, Sadr City, and Mosul operations have all been Iraqi planned and executed, with U.S. forces in supporting roles. Despite the size and scope of these operations, the attack incident levels figures failed to come even close to the numbers seen last summer. By May 9, the last week charted, the incident levels were at their lowest level since April 2004.

There are still many challenges ahead in Iraq. Al Qaeda must be rooted out of Mosul and the northern regions. The Mahdi Army truce is holding, and the Iraqi Army is taking over security in the former lawless areas of Sadr City and Basra. Dealing with the Sadrist movement and the Mahdi Army will require a delicate balance of political and military pressure from this point on.

But at this point is impossible to argue that the surge has not led to dramatic improvements in security and allowed the Iraqi military to take the lead. The numbers don't lie.

General Petraeus, in testimony today before the Senate Armed Services Committee, suggested that he will be able to recommend further troop reductions in the September time frame:

“My sense is that I will be able to make a recommendation at that time for further reductions,” Gen. David H. Petraeus told the Senate Armed Services Committee, saying his recommendation “could include major combat formations.”

Petraeus is in the process of removing five brigades of U.S. troops brought in last year in a “surge” designed to stabilize the security of Iraq and buy time for political reconciliation among its warring factions. That will reduce force levels in Iraq to about 140,000 troops. During his testimony to Congress in April, he called for a 45-day pause at the end of July to assess the situation.

Petraeus also said the United States “likely will do a bit more” with its troop commitments to Afghanistan, acknowledging the comments of U.S. commanders there of the need for more forces.

This would seem to further reduce the likelihood of Iraq becoming a major issue in the fall campaign. The Iraqi government will take over full responsibility for security by the end of the year. And given the sensitivity of the issue, it's hard to imagine Petraeus entertaining lightly the idea of reducing troop levels unless he was convinced that such reductions were feasible without badly damaging the progress that has been made in the last year.

If Iraq is largely stable and U.S. troops are out largely of harm's way, would a President Obama remain committed to the idea of withdrawing our forces to another spot in the Middle East?

Does killing the enemy have an impact on the outcome of a battle? Over at The Wonk Room, a blog run by the Center for American Progress, I have been criticized for conducting "body counts" of Mahdi Army fighters. The author goes on to state that killing Mahdi fights only breeds more Mahdi fighters, so the effort is pointless.

I think we’ve seen this “dead bodies=success” mentality bleed out into pro-war blogs as well, where the numbers of insurgent dead are credulously relayed and uncritically reported as progress, irrespective of the collateral damage incurred in those deaths and of the galvanizing effects that this has on support for insurgency.

Well, it turns out I've been low balling the Mahdi Army deaths. I've estimated, based on a careful examination of the reports from the U.S. and Iraqi military, that 600 Mahdi Army fighters were killed in and around Sadr City since fighting first broke out on March 25. It turns out my estimate is below that of the U.S. military, which puts the number at 700, and way below that of the Mahdi Army, which puts the number at 1,000.

Col. John Hort, the commander of the Third Brigade Combat Team, Fourth Infantry Division, estimated that some 700 militia fighters had been killed by air and ground fire since fighting erupted in late March. “It is pretty safe to say that we have killed the equivalent of a U.S. battalion,” he said in a recent interview.

Some Mahdi Army leaders put the death toll slightly higher. When a truce was first announced, they threatened to refuse Mr. Sadr’s order to stand down. “What about the martyrs?” a Mahdi battalion leader recently told a reporter. “A thousand martyrs, what did they die for?”

So, if you prefer the word of the Mahdi Army over the U.S. military, you'll see my numbers weren't manufactured.

But the bigger point is the effect the prolonged offensive against the Mahdi Army in Sadr City had on the Sadrist movement. The leadership of Muqtada al Sadr saw that the Iraqi government had no plans to halt the attack and were determined to push into the Mahdi Army stronghold. They saw the Iraqi government had the full backing of the U.S. military. The Sadrists also saw their combat power being ground down, and as the Mahdi commander said, "what did they die for?" The Iraqi government was determined to assert its writ in Sadr City, and was willing to destroy the Mahdi Army in the process.

There should be little doubt the casualties taken in Sadr City by the Mahdi Army had an impact on the Sadrist's decision-making process. Sadr and his political leaders had two choices: fight, and as the New York Times's analysis stated, have their combat power depleted further while they lost Sadr City anyway, or cut a deal and hope to fight another day. This is often portrayed as a “victory” for the Mahdi Army, but the fact is that in Sadr City, as well as in Basra, the Iraqi government achieved its goal of moving its forces into these cities to provide security and push the militias into the background.

Just over one and a half years ago, Abu Ayyub al Masri, al Qaeda in Iraq’s leader, was riding high. His terror group seemingly brought the U.S. to the edge of withdrawal in Iraq. His tactics may have cost the Republican party the 2006 midterm elections. He worked to unite disparate Sunni militants and provide al Qaeda with an Iraqi political front, called the Islamic State of Iraq. Al Qaeda’s ability to intimidate the tribes and take control over vast swaths of the Sunni provinces and the Iraqi capital forced the U.S. military to adopt a new counterinsurgency plan.

Al Masri was a wanted man. Some argued his capture or death might be more valuable than that of Osama bin Laden. The State Department put a $5 million bounty out for information leading to his capture.

But now, al Masri’s stock has fallen, and hard. He has been removed from the State Department's Rewards for Justice Program. The Department of Defense has placed a reward of $100,000 for information leading to al Masri’s capture. To put this amount into perspective, low level al Qaeda operatives such as Sheikh Ahmed Salim Swedan and Ahmed Mohamed Hamed Ali, who helped with the 1998 attack on the U.S. embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and Nairobi, Kenya is worth $5 million.

"The value of this guy is not what it was, say, at this time last year," Captain Jamie Graybeal, a spokesman for U.S. Central Command told the AP. "Our assessment has led us to believe he's not as effective a leader on the battlefield ... and because of that he's just not as valuable to us."

Since Multinational Forces Iraq surged U.S. forces into Iraq and changed its counterinsurgency strategy, al Qaeda in Iraq, under the command of al Masri, has lost support amongst the tribes and allowed the Awakening and related Sons of Iraq movements to eject it from Sunni areas. Al Qaeda has largely been ejected from Baghdad and the belt regions, and has been forced to reestablish its network in Mosul and northern Diyala province, far from the center of political power. Even radical Islamist groups have abandoned al Qaeda's Islamic State of Iraq. One wonders what al Masri’s stock within al Qaeda’s central command is at this point in time.

Reihan Salam has a typically thoughtful take on events in Basra. His bottom line:

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...

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.

Read the whole thing.

In light of today's New York Times story on the success in Basra ("In a rare success, forces loyal to Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki have largely quieted the city, to the initial surprise and growing delight of many inhabitants who only a month ago shuddered under deadly clashes between Iraqi troops and Shiite militias."), a little trip down defeatist lane:

"I hope we don't hear any glorification of what happened in Basra,” House Speaker Rep. Nancy Pelosi, 4/3/08. [I guess the NYT didn’t get the memo.]

"Prime Minister Maliki's action in Basra once again demonstrated Prime Minister Maliki's incompetence." Senator Carl Levin, 4/9/08

"It is my understanding… that really Sadr won politically in terms of the confrontation in Basra." Senator Claire McCaskill, D-Missouri, 4/8/08

"On the operation in Basra, which I continue to think was a very ill-thought out enterprise. This was not a broad-based enterprise against militias… And nor was it narrowly focused on the so-called special groups. It was -- let's call it what is was: It was another step in an internal Shiite civil war." Robert Malley, 4/8/08

Robert Malley, of course, was an Obama adviser at the time of that statement, though he was recently relieved of his campaign duties when it became clear that he'd been holding meetings with members of Hamas (organizing the endorsement?). One wonders, though, if this is the kind of analysis Obama will be relying on in order to make military decisions as commander in chief. As for our fearless Democratic Congressmen, what a disgrace.

For the past month and a half, the Democrats and their anti-war propagandists have had a very clear narrative about what happened in Basra since Prime Minister Maliki ordered an offensive there on March 24. First, they said, Basra proves that the Iraqi Security Forces remain feckless and incompetent, a failed force that was routed by the militias. Second, what unfolded in Basra is not really a fight between the Iraqi Security Forces of the legitimate Iraqi state, backed by the U.S., on the one hand, and a bunch of theocratic criminal gangs, backed by Iran, on the other; on the contrary, it’s just an intra-Shiite civil war between equally pernicious and morally repugnant factions (Sadrists versus Badrists) all of whom are equally bad. Third, Basra was a humiliating defeat for Prime Minister Maliki, and a major win for Iran.

Alas for the Democrats and their blogger friends, the front page of today’s New York Times neatly demolishes each of these arguments ("Et tu, Bill Keller?"). The story, filed from Basra, reveals that just about everything said about Basra by the Democrats over the past seven weeks is, well, wrong. According to the Times, in the seven weeks since Prime Minister Maliki ordered an offensive against the Iranian-backed militias terrorizing the city, Basra has been nothing less than "transformed":

In a rare success, forces loyal to Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki have largely quieted the city, to the initial surprise and growing delight of many inhabitants who only a month ago shuddered under deadly clashes between Iraqi troops and Shiite militias.…

Government forces have now taken over Islamic militants’ headquarters and halted the death squads and “vice ‘enforcers’” who attacked women, Christians, musicians, alcohol sellers and anyone suspected of collaborating with Westerners.…

Qais, a music student, spoke of his relief at no longer having to hide his violin in a sack of rice in his trunk.

Most of the students were Shiite, but one youth named Alaa said that he was a Sunni and that 95 percent of his relatives had fled Basra after sectarian killings, including that of his uncle. “I want to thank Mr. Nuri al-Maliki, because he cleaned Basra of murderers, hijackers and thieves,” Alaa said.

It was not an uncommon sentiment. In his city center office, Yahya, a wealthy businessman said he had just begun going onto the streets without his customary 10 bodyguards. Insisting that he was not a political supporter of the prime minister, he said he was nevertheless so grateful for the security improvements that he and colleagues had downloaded Mr. Maliki’s face onto their mobile telephones as screensavers.

And just a few weeks ago we'd all been assured that this was a humiliating defeat for Maliki and the Iraqi security forces. Just as we were told that the surge was a failure in June of last year. And six months before that, that victory was impossible in Anbar. It's almost like the left is invested in an American defeat.

As noted last night, reports of the capture of al Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Ayyub al Masri must be tempered with healthy a dose of caution until the U.S. military can confirmed the news. This morning, the U.S. spokeswoman in northern Iraq said al Masri was not in the U.S. military’s custody, nor has he been detained by Iraqi troops.

It certainly was tempting to believe al Masri was captured. The location of his reported capture fit the storyline from Iraq over the past several months. Fourteen of the 30 senior-most al Qaeda leaders that have been killed or captured over the past three months were killed or captured in Mosul. The city is al Qaeda’s last urban stronghold and sits at the end of the last operational ratline into Syria. Al Masri’s father-in-law was captured in Mosul in September 2006.

While the latest false report of al Masri’s capture/death is another black eye on the Iraqi security forces’ communications department, the event highlights the Iraq military’s increasing role in taking on security operations in Iraq. Iraqi commandos conducted the raid on the hideout believed to have been occupied by al Masri. The intelligence used in the operation was Iraqi-derived. U.S. forces were behind the death of Abu Musab al Zarqawi, the infamous, brutal leader of al Qaeda in Iraq in the summer of 2006. It would be fitting if Iraqi troops took down Zarqawi’s successor, who came close to uniting the Sunni insurgency and splitting the Iraqi nation.

Somebody sent me this in an email and I didn't think it could be true. Then I followed the link to the Code Pink website and I was still dubious because the page looks like a mock-up, and it's so nutty...I still didn't think it could be true. But now Fox confirms, Code Pink is engaging in witchcraft at the Marine Corps recruiting station in Berkeley in another attempt to...drive the Marines into an ocean of peace?

Witches, Crones, Sirens come to the MRS today to cast spells, weave magic, invoke the foremothers, share wisdom, lead rituals to banish war and violence and to bring peace to the MRS, to protect our youth from the powerful spells of pro-war forces, to lead the men of the marine recruiting station off into the oceans of peace! Some witches, crones and sirens are willing to risk arrest, others are not. We call on all crones, witches and sirens to come to the MRS, to bring your energy, your wisdom, your fierce determination to end war now and bring peace to our world.

These people are bonkers, but you have to remember, each one of them is somebody's wife, or sister, or mother. Mental illness is a serious problem, and you just hope that this election will, at some point, get back to "real" issues like providing affordable mental health care for wealthy Bay Area liberals.

Unconfirmed reports from Iraq indicate the Iraqi Army may have captured Abu Ayyub al Masri, the leader of al Qaeda in Iraq who was hand picked by Ayman al Zawahiri to succeed Abu Musab al Zarqawi. Al Masri has reportedly been captured in the northern city of Mosul, where al Qaeda is attempting to regroup after taking a beating from U.S. and Iraqi forces during the height of the surge in 2007. Reports state that he has been transferred to U.S. custody to confirm his identity.

Al Masri's capture would serve as a political and military victory for both the United States and Iraq. The capture of the leader of the terror group not only demonstrates a measure of progress, but his knowledge of al Qaeda's organization both inside and outside Iraq will prove useful in efforts to dismantle the terror group. But a word of caution: Iraqi security forces have made similar claims in the past only to be discredited days later. If it's true, the U.S. military will soon confirm the capture.

Noah Millman makes an excellent point at the American Scene:

You know, the forces of the United States have been engaged in Iraq since January 1991. That’s seventeen years. This year will see the last American election in which all eligible voters were born before our conflict with Iraq. Our conflict with Iraq has lasted longer than the conflict in Vietnam (dating that war either from the Hanoi Politburo’s decision for war in 1959 or President Kennedy’s dispatch of military advisers), longer than the Weimar Republic, longer than the combined terms of Hoover and Roosevelt, longer than the Civil War plus Reconstruction, longer than the period from Napoleon’s coup to his defeat at Waterloo . . . it’s lasted a long time....

This is all by way of putting the debate we currently have before us in context. McCain’s “100 Year War” has been much mocked, but we’ve been engaged in Iraq for more than 1/6th of that time period already. What he’s talking about is continuing along a road that we’ve been travelling for three Presidencies.

After several days of heavy fighting in the Mahdi Army stronghold of Sadr City, the press tells us that over 900 "people" have been killed during fighting in Sadr City over the past five weeks. But how many of those killed were Mahdi Army fighters? AFP doesn't even try to answer these questions, and in failing to do so, the reporting gives the impression that all of these “people” are civilians, and U.S. and Iraqi forces are using indiscriminate force in Sadr City.

I've made a count of the Mahdi Army fighters confirmed killed during engagements in and immediately around Sadr City since the fighting began on March 25. U.S. and Iraqi troops killed 173 from the period between March 25 and March 30, when the Basra offensive began until Muqtada al Sadr issued a ceasefire. Seventy-one Mahdi Army fighters killed from March 31 to April 19 during a relative lull in the fighting. One hundred and ninety-one Mahdi fighters were killed between April 20 and April 30, the period starting after Sadr threatened a third uprising and as U.S. and Iraqi forces took control of the bottom third of Sadr City.

That makes for 435 Mahdi Army fighters killed in and around Sadr City since the fighting intensified there after the government of Iraq launched its crackdown in Basra on March 25. Almost half of the “people” killed were Mahdi Army fighters. And the odds are even more of those killed were Mahdi Army fighters, as we have little way of knowing how many wounded later died of their injuries during battle. Sadr’s people control the hospitals in Sadr City.

The Mahdi Army is taking heavy casualties when running up against U.S. and Iraqi forces in Baghdad, and the high numbers have an impact on morale and recruiting over time. The media loves to tell us how many U.S. soldiers were killed during fighting--were told that 47 US troops were killed in Iraq this month, and more than 20 in Baghdad alone--but seems to shy away from reporting the number of enemy casualties. The fight against the Mahdi Army certainly won't be determined by body counts, but there clearly is a double standard in reporting. U.S. body counts are news, but Mahdi Army body counts are to be avoided.

CBS News reporter Richard Butler was rescued by Iraqi troops in Basra on April 10 after being held captive for two months. Throughout his ordeal, his hands were kept in restraints and a sack kept over his head, although he was able to hear plenty of Hezbollah propaganda and ringtones. His sparse diet caused him to lose 42 pounds.

Not pretty. But it could have been worse:

Butler said he felt it was better to be kidnapped in Iraq then taken into custody by Americans in Afghanistan.

"I was pleased I wasn't being mortarboarded in Guantanamo or being held for six and a half years like an Al-Jazeera cameraman, for instance," he said.

Absolutely. American troops are renowned for torturing network reporters. You read about that all the time. Poor bastards are dropping like flies at the hands of our soldiers. It's a real scandal.

In related news, the ratings for CBS News hit a record low last week.

Don’t worry about Richard Butler, by the way. He’s recovering at his home. In France. But you just knew that, right?

(And I know what you’re thinking: Hezbollah ringtones?!)

The Battle for Sadr City is on. Several weeks ago, U.S. and Iraqi forces took control of the southern third of the city and began constructing concrete barriers to secure the area. Since U.S. and Iraqi forces moved into Sadr City, units have conducted patrols and distributed humanitarian aid to the Iraqis living in the neighborhoods. The U.S. military is also conducting aerial patrols of Sadr City, and is striking at Mahdi Army fighters as they plant roadside bombs, move weapons, and gather for attacks.

This has provoked a violent response from Muqtada al Sadr's Mahdi Army, which is struggling to prevent the Iraqi government from maintaining a foothold in Sadr's power base in Baghdad. Over the past several days, Mahdi Army fighters have grouped for mass attacks. Each time U.S. and Iraqi forces beat them back, inflicting heavy losses on the enemy while suffering few of their own.

One of the largest engagements occurred today. A large force of Mahdi Army fighters ambushed a U.S. patrol on the border area where the wall is being built. U.S. forces responded and killed 28 Mahdi Army fighters while suffering six wounded. None of the casualties are life-threatening. On Sunday, 22 Mahdi Army fighters were killed as they massed to strike at a checkpoint in Sadr City. Sixteen more were killed in separate engagements that same day.

There have been numerous other air and ground engagements with the Mahdi Army in Sadr City and the surrounding areas over the past several weeks. Since Sadr threatened to conduct a third uprising nine days ago, U.S. and Iraqi troops have killed 186 Mahdi Army fighters in Baghdad alone. Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki has said he is serious about taking control of Sadr City and disarming and disbanding the Mahdi Army. There are no signs that he plans to halt the offensive.

From the Times Online:

"Iraqi forces see victory in Basra"

The paper's Baghdad correspondent notes that "Iraqi soldiers are standing proud in Basra," and that "many of them say the operation has boosted their confidence." So, more evidence that this wasn't quite the humiliating defeat the New York Times first reported.

HT: Instapundit

The Wounded Warrior Project kicked off its "White House to Lighthouse Challenge" yesterday with remarks by the president:

Four years ago, Chris Carney decided to ride coast-to-coast to raise awareness and money for our wounded warriors. In the first year he biked more than 5,000 miles, from Long Island to the Pacific Ocean, and raised more than a million dollars for the Wounded Warrior Project. He started what's called the annual Soldier Ride.

The next year, wounded vets started coming along. In 2006, 75 wounded warriors took turns riding portions of the cross-country journey. These servicemen and women rode to raise money for their fellow soldiers, including those who were hurt too much to ride. And they also rode to show themselves what they could do, and in so doing, they showed the world what they could do.

Wounded Warrior is a very worth charity...you can click here to donate and click here for more information.

Harry 'the war is lost' Reid put out this statement on Petraeus's move to CENTCOM:

The next CENTCOM commander and field commander in Iraq will have to help the next President with a number of critically important challenges: making America more secure, restoring America's power and influence in the world, fixing our costly strategy in Iraq, and articulating a more effective strategy for winning in Afghanistan and defeating Al Qaeda in Pakistan....Our ground forces' readiness and the battles in Afghanistan and against al Qaeda in Pakistan have suffered as a result of the current costly Iraq strategy. These challenges will require fresh, independent and creative thinking and, if directed to by a new President, a commitment to implementing major changes in strategy...The Senate will carefully examine these nominations and I will be looking for credible assurances of a strong commitment to implementing a more effective national security strategy.

Not a word of thanks or praise for the remarkable job Petraeus has done in Iraq. Stay classy, Harry.

Update: It's interesting to note the contrast with the statement from Lieberman, which praised Petraeus saying he "has won the admiration and respect of the entire country over the past fifteen months." Isn't that objectively true? Or has the Democratic party been entirely co-opted by the 'Betray Us' crowd at MoveOn.org.

AP reports:

The Associated Press has learned that Gen. David Petraeus, the four-star general who has been leading troops in Iraq, has been tapped to become the next commander of U.S. Central Command....

Taking Petraeus' position as the senior commander in Iraq would be Lt. Gen. Ray Odierno, who had until recently been serving as Petraeus' deputy.

The allegedly lame duck Bush administration has--if this report is correct--hit a home run. CENTCOM is the central theater of the war on terror, and the president is putting our best commander in charge of it. What Odierno achieved as day-to-day commander in Iraq was amazing (see Fred and Kim Kagan’s article, "The Patton of Counterinsurgency"), and he’s clearly the right choice for MNFI. Bush has done the right thing, overriding opposition from within the Pentagon. He deserves congratulations--and thanks.

Fred Kaplan stakes out a risky position:

In other words, we find ourselves lassoed into an armed intra-Shiite power struggle on two fronts—and the Iranians are positioned to benefit from one or both contests, no matter whether the side we're backing wins or loses.

Whatever the outcome, Kaplan can claim it's a disaster for the United States. And I wouldn't expect anything less of him.

AP reports:

The Iraqi army command in Basra is giving top leaders of the Mahdi Army in the city 24 hours to surrender.

The order comes from Gen. Mohan al-Freiji, who told reporters Tuesday that Basra city and the surrounding province are back under government control.

Al-Freiji says he has warrants for 81 people, including senior leaders of the Mahdi militia, and they have 24 hours to give up.

It's almost like Maliki didn't go crawling to Sadr and the Iranians to plead for a humiliating cease-fire.

Tom Donnelly has a piece on the website today explaining how the press botched this story so badly.

Multinational Forces Iraq has dramatically changed it’s messaging concerning the Mahdi Army and attacks in Baghdad. While MNF-I continues to refer to the Shia militias as “criminals” or Special Groups in their press releases, there are no longer any calls for the Mahdi Army to obey Muqtada al Sadr’s cease-fire order.This is occurring as the Iraqi government and MNF-I are pressing the fight against the Mahdi Army in Baghdad, Basra, and elsewhere in the South.

In the past, MNF-I press releases would refer to Sadr with the honorific “al-Sayyid” and appeal to the Mahdi Army to adhere to the ceasefire. Here is an example of a typical press release from late December 2007, which leaves an opening for Sadr and his Mahdi Army to end the violence:

"We commend all those who honor al-Sayyid Muqtada al-Sadr’s ceasefire pledge… Significant progress has been made in the fight for a secure and stable Iraq, but dangerous criminal elements still exist."

Now, MNF-I is explicitly stating the goal is to “capture or kill these criminals” while dropping any pretenses about the neutrality of the Mahdi Army. Here is an example from a press release today:

”Iranian-backed Special Groups and other criminal elements who refuse to honor the rule of law are directly responsible for the current violence in Baghdad, as well as the deaths of countless innocent civilians,” said Lt. Col. Steven Stover, a spokesman for MND-B. “We will continue to work with Iraqi civilians and Iraqi Security Forces to identify, capture or kill these criminals who are terrorizing the people of Baghdad.”

A press release from April 20 actually noted that “criminal” fighters “retreated to building that contained the local Sadr Trend office” after a clash with Iraqi soldiers and special police. In the past, MNF-I would not directly link the “criminals” and “Special Groups” to Sadr’s political movement.

The change is significant. Just a few weeks ago, General David Petraeus was giving Sadr an out by saying he had a place in Iraq’s political process. Last week, Admiral Michael Mullen, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Sadr could either participate in the political process or not, the choice is his. This weekend, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice openly insulted Sadr by calling him a coward for hiding in Iran while he instructed the Mahdi Army to fight U.S. and Iraqi forces. "I know he's sitting in Iran," Rice said. "I guess its all-out war for anybody but him. I guess that's the message; his followers can go to their deaths and he's in Iran." Now MNF-I drops its friendly titles for Sadr and references to the cease-fire, while killing or capturing Mahdi Army fighters on a daily basis. MNF-I is withdrawing the carrot and applying the stick.

We keep hearing that Muqtada al Sadr has gained the upper hand after fighting “bogged down” in Baghdad and Basra. Time magazine has led the charge on this front. The April 15 article titled "Al-Sadr Tightens the Screws” epitomizes the tone of Time’s coverage in Iraq. “Sadr's Mahdi Army has effectively stopped an advance by U.S. and Iraqi forces into its strongholds in Baghdad and Basra after weeks of fighting” writes Mark Kukis. “Sadr's political power appears to be growing even as the crisis wears on.” These are difficult arguments to make considering:

a) Sadr called for a cease-fire in Basra and Baghdad just as the Iraqi Army began to push reinforcements into the troubled areas.

b) The Iraqi government decided to prevent political parties from participating in the upcoming provincial elections. Sadr’s spokesmen were in a near panic and admitted they were politically isolated as the continuum of Shia, Sunni, and Kurdish parties backed the measure.

c) Iraqis troops have pushed through at least three of the five of the Mahdi Army strongholds in Basra.

d) Iraqi and U.S. troops now occupy the southern third of Sadr City.

e) Sadr has issued a series of demands, insisting that the Iraqi military pardon those who deserted during the recent fighting and halt military operations lest he call for a third uprising. The Iraqi government has not pardoned the soldiers and police, nor has it stopped military operations.

f) Sadr called for a million man march in Najaf, then moved the march to Baghdad, then canceled the march. He claimed the military was interfering with his supporter’s movement but his recent marches have been less than stellar, drawing at most 10,000 supporters.

The latest bit of news from Iraq shows the Sadrist political movement is desperate to end the advance in Sadr City. Voices of Iraq reported that the Sadrists has asked former Prime Minister Iyad Illawi to mediate a cease-fire with the U.S. military. “Sadrist bloc lawmakers called on [me] two days ago to mediate with U.S. troops to cease military operations and to stop the concrete walls siege imposed on Sadr city for over a month,” Illawi said at a press conference in Baghdad, referring to the barriers being put up to partition the city to allow Iraqi and U.S. forces to stabilize the neighborhoods.

It will be interesting to see how this latest move by Sadr will be spun into a moment of triumph.

German conservative interior minister Wolfgang Schaeuble has come out with a bold initiative to provide asylum for thousands of Iraqi Christians forced to leave their homeland in recent years because of religious persecution at the hands of Muslim extremist groups. According to the Schaeuble plan, which is backed by the interior ministers of the 16 German states, Iraqi Christians would be allowed to stay in Germany until conditions on the ground in Iraq have improved to the point where they can return home. While the Interior Ministry has not officially come out with any concrete refugees quotas, Berlin insiders believe that Germany could end up accepting anywhere between 5,000 and 7,000 Iraqi Christians per year.

For far too long, European governments have ignored the terrible fate suffered by Iraq’s most vulnerable minority; Christians, after all, are viewed by both Sunni and Shia terrorists as supporters of the American-led "Crusader Coalition." Scandinavian countries like Sweden have already granted asylum to tens of thousands of Iraqi refugees, many of them Christians. In Germany, in contrast, the plight of the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi refugees scattered around neighboring countries like Syria, Jordan, and Lebanon, has only recently garnered attention. Catholic and Protestant church organizations in Germany have been particularly vocal. At the moment, Iraq is already the number one country of origin of asylum seekers in Germany. In 2007, 4,327 Iraqis applied for asylum, more than twice the number compared to the year before.

So far, politicians from Germany’s governing conservative CDU/CSU parties have taken the lead in calling for new asylum programs specifically targeted at Iraqi Christians. In contrast, their left-wing SPD coalition partners and the opposition Green party have voiced skepticism about the Schaeuble initiative. For example, Brigitte Zypries, Germany’s SPD justice minister, argued that "It’s a difficult path when you start saying that we’re accepting somebody because of their religious conviction."

The Greens, a party with a long track record of calling on Germany to open the floodgates to refugees and asylum seekers from virtually around the world, voiced reservations, too. "We have to help everybody who is persecuted and cannot say there are our Christian brothers and sisters, and for others with a different identity we don’t care," says Volker Beck, a senior Green MP. Finally, Wolfgang Schaeuble’s other 26 EU partners yesterday rejected his call for a similar EU-wide refugee plan at a ministerial-level meeting in Luxembourg. Countries such as Slovenia (which currently holds the rotating EU presidency) and Luxembourg were particularly opposed to the German initiative, arguing again that one must not single out Iraqi Christians for preferential asylum treatment.

The Iraqi government’s willingness to take on the Mahdi Army in its strongholds in Baghdad, Basra, and elsewhere in the South is perhaps the most significant news story from Iraq this year. In 2006 and 2007, analysts, pundits, military officers, and politicians said the Shia militias--particularly the Mahdi Army, pose the greatest long term threat in Iraq. Now that the Iraqi government has decided to take on the Mahdi Army, the press is fixated on distinct incidences of failure of the Iraqi security forces in their efforts to dislodge the Mahdi Army from their strongholds.

In today's New York Times, Michael Gordon focuses on the desertion of a company of Iraqi soldiers from their outpost in Sadr City. The story is factually accurate. A company of about 80 Iraqi soldiers abandoned their post. They deserted while engaged with the enemy, which is a serious crime during war. This is the main focus of the article.

Yes, Gordon touches on the fact that the Iraqi and U.S. military scrambled to get a unit to replace the company--and succeeded. Gordon briefly mentions the other Iraqi units on the line held. They even “fought hard.” He even recognizes the Iraqi Army is in Sadr City! But these are just one-off statements of little significance to the narrative, which summed up in a single paragraph:

This episode was a blow to the American effort to push the Iraqis into the lead in the struggle to wrest control of parts of Sadr City from the Mahdi Army militia and what Americans and Iraqis say are Iranian-backed groups.

The fact is the Iraqi Army is still inside Sadr City. A security zone has been carved out of 1/3 of the Mahdi Army controlled district. One company broke, the rest fought and seem to have acquitted themselves well, even if they expended plenty of ammunition (note: the Mahdi Army does the same thing).

Gordon also fails to tell us what unit of the Iraqi Army this is. This is important, as some divisions are greener than others. The likelihood here is that this was one of the young brigades from the 11th Division. The 44th Brigade of the 11th Division, which is in Sadr City, went through what is called “Unit Set Fielding”--where a unit is formed and receives its equipment--in December of 2007. The 43rd Brigade went through the training in January of this year. The 11th Division was commissioned to form in November 2007.

How do I know this? DJ Elliott meticulously tracks the formation of the Iraqi Army in his Iraqi Security Forces Order of Battle, which is updated monthly at The Long War Journal. Is it too much to ask the New York Times, with its near limitless resources, to do the same?

The article also misses the wider implications of what is occurring with the Iraqi security forces. In 2006, Iraqi units either refused to go to Baghdad or did not have the logistical capabilities to deploy. Those that did were severely undermanned. In 2007 the logistical and manning issues were largely resolved, but Sadr City remained off limits. In 2008, just three weeks after the Iraqi security forces took on the Mahdi Army in Basra, which sparked fighting in Baghdad, the Iraqi Army is 1/3 of the way into Sadr City. That is the story you are not being told.

The Iraqi Interior Ministry has released the official numbers on the number of police and soldiers dismissed in the aftermath of the fighting in Basra. At first glance, the numbers may be surprising: 500 soldiers and 421 police, including 37 senior police officers, were dismissed for failing to fight the Mahdi Army or for deserting their posts.

But looking at the overall numbers and the performance of the Iraqi security forces in the recent past, these numbers aren't all that concerning. There are over 16,000 police and 14,000 soldiers deployed in Basra, which means that a little more than two percent of the police and three percent of the soldiers either defected or abandoned their posts. There is no breakdown on how many soldiers and police defected to the Mahdi Army, and how many stopped fighting out of fear for their families or the poor performance of their leadership.

If the past performance of the Iraqi security forces is any guide, most of the defections will have come from the police ranks. Most of the Iraqi Army failures appear to have occurred within a single battalion from the 52nd Brigade of the 14th Iraqi Army Division, the youngest unit in the Army.

The 52nd Brigade is far from "one of [the Iraqi Army's] best--and also one of the most loyal to Prime Minister Maliki," as reported by Kevin Drum at CBS News. The formation of the 14th Division has been rushed by the Ministry of Defense because of the security situation in Basra. The division was not due to be stood up until June 2008.

One added benefit of the Basra operation is the Iraqi Army and the police have learned much about the loyalty and fighting capability of their forces and the level of infiltration by the Mahdi Army. Only small numbers of soldiers and police either underperformed or defected. The Sadrists claim they have wide support in the Shia South, but this support does not appear to extend to the security forces operating in Basra.

Earlier this week, the Today show ran a remarkable story about a Marine serving in Iraq:

If you’ve ever wondered what the Marines have in mind when they advertise for “a few good men,” look no further than Gunnery Sgt. William “Spanky” Gibson.

Two years ago, he lost a leg to a sniper’s bullet in Iraq. Today, he’s back in the combat zone — by his own choice. If you notice an unusual spring in his step as he goes about his duties at Camp Fallujah in Iraq, mark it down to the wonders of the modern technology that went into the carbon-fiber prosthetic leg Gibson wears. He may have surrendered a leg in serving his country, but he’s far from handicapped.

The accompanying video is worth watching for a couple of reasons. One, it helps to remind us of the astonishing courage and strength that our armed forces possess. Sgt. Gibson is the first, full-leg amputee to re-up for a tour of combat. No obligation on his part; he wanted to.

Two, it makes a nice antidote to the seemingly-relentless parade of fictional movies and documentaries that make our troops look like nothing but bitter fools who were tricked into combat. Take Tomas Young, the 25 year-old paralyzed by gunfire days after arriving in Iraq. His story, told in the new documentary Body of War, co-directed by Phil Donahue, is certainly tragic. There’s no reason it shouldn’t be told. But isn’t there room on the big screen for a movie about Sgt. Gibson, or any other soldier who believes in what they’re fighting for? Donahue and the rest would tell you that their anti-war stories must be told because the media is ignoring them. This is an odd thing to say since only anti-war movies have been released since Operation Desert Storm.

All those Iraq-themed movies of 2007 tanked, so you’d think some director might take a new approach: American Soldier as Hero; Terrorist as Bad Guy. But that would take guts. How odd.

The U.S. military has long worked to divide Muqtada al Sadr’s Mahdi Army and force Sadr to participate in the political process. This strategy became evident in early 2007, when Sadr ordered his fighters off of the streets at the onset of the Baghdad Security Plan. The U.S. military touted Sadr’s efforts, began negotiating with elements of the Mahdi Army (often called the “noble Mahdi Army”), and kicked off a concerted campaign against the more radical elements it described as the “Special Groups” or “secret cells.”

U.S. officials and military officers have not gone on the record about this policy. But today, Admiral Michael Mullen, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, alluded to the real view of the military on Sadr. Mullen said Sadr is "somewhat of an enigma" when it comes to the violence carried out in his name:

"So, I think Sadr clearly is a very important and key player in all this," Mullen added. "Exactly where he's headed and what impact he'll have long term, it's, I think, is out there still to be determined."

The U.S. military continues to offer both the carrot and the stick to Sadr. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said it was very unlikely Sadr would be detained if he returned to Iraq, while Mullen has left the door open for Sadr to join the political process. At the same time, Iraqi and U.S. forces strike at the “rogue” elements of Sadr’s Mahdi Army while preparing the battlefield to enter the Mahdi Army stronghold of Sadr City and continuing operations in Basra. Meanwhile, the Iraqi government is moving to bar Sadr’s political party from participating in elections if it does not disband the Mahdi Army militia. Sadr has his out, it is a question of whether he will take it.

Michael Yon has a must-read piece in today's Journal. He makes a lot of interesting observations based on the unprecedented amount of time he's spent in Iraq reporting on the war, but I think most important is this:

Soldiers everywhere are paid, and good generals know it is dangerous to mess with a soldier's money. The shoeless heroes who froze at Valley Forge were paid, and when their pay did not come they threatened to leave – and some did. Soldiers have families and will not fight for a nation that allows their families to starve. But to say that the tribes who fight with us are "rented" is perhaps as vile a slander as to say that George Washington's men would have left him if the British offered a better deal.

The left has long ridiculed the members of the Anbar Awakening as mere mercenaries, fighting for the insurgency and al Qaeda first before being offered better pay by the U.S. military. Yon doesn't see it that way. In fact, he says that "powerful tribes in Anbar province cooperate with us now because they came to see al Qaeda for what it is--and to see Americans for what we truly are."

It's definitely worth reading the whole thing. Even soldiers who've been in Iraq for a full 15-month tour are unlikely to have the perspective that Yon does if only because Yon is able to cover the whole country. If he says there has been a dramatic turnaround...it's hard to argue with it. And of course, buy the book, Moment of Truth.

Just as a follow-up to this, AFP reports:

Two Israeli civilians and seven Palestinians were killed on Wednesday in an explosion of violence on the Gaza Strip border after Palestinian commandos stormed into Israel....

The Israeli army said Palestinian fighters, under cover of mortar fire, breached the border near the Nahal Oz terminal that provides Gaza with its fuel supplies, and moved into Israel.

Israel withdrew unilaterally, ended the occupation of Gaza, and a terrorist group took over the territory. The result is cross-border violence. The same thing happened after the Israeli withdrawal from Southern Lebanon. So tell me again how unilateral withdrawal from Iraq will lead to a different result? Granted AQI won't be able to run across the border to kill Americans, but there is no doubt that terrorists can strike from a great distance when they are allowed to plot and train unmolested.

The left is quick to point out that there is no clear path to victory in Iraq, but one gets no sense that those agitating for withdrawal have grappled at all with the consequences of such a policy. If U.S. forces are to leave Iraq, how, precisely, do we avoid the spill over of instability and violence that characterized the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan and the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and Lebanon. There can obviously be no guarantee, but if Obama's plan is to "get us out of Iraq as carefully as we were careless getting in," then there must be some attempt to answer this question.

Andrew Sullivan makes the perfectly reasonable point that Iraq is not South Korea, or Japan, or Germany. He says that if American forces could stay in those countries for 100 years, the same may not be true of Iraq, a country at the heart of a Muslim world:

There is no way an Arab Muslim country will tolerate Western troops permanently based on their land - without constant war and threat of war. To believe otherwise is to engage in a "holiday from reality." We've done enough of that.

The future of a permanently occupied Iraq is less likely to be Japan than the West Bank. And the deeper we are stuck there, the more our predicament will become the awful, morally corrosive, soul-sapping experience of the occupying Israelis.

There's only one problem with this analogy--it, too, ignores reality. Despite all the settlements in the West Bank, there is a broad consensus in Israel that occupation is a disaster, that it must be ended, that it is, as Andrew says, morally corrosive. And yet they do not leave the West Bank. Why? Because they left Gaza, and Hamas took over. Because the left Southern Lebanon, and Hezbollah took over. Because they face daily rocket fire from Gaza in the south, and have only temporarily suppressed the threat from the north following the costly reinvasion of Southern Lebanon in 2006.

Again, it's an entirely fair point to say that occupation is bad, and that there are differences between Japan and Iraq. But one must also examine how those differences will manifest themselves in the wake of a withdrawal. If the future of an occupied Iraq is less likely to be Japan than the West Bank, Sullivan needs to explain why a future withdrawal is less likely to be Gaza than Vietnam. Because I don't think anyone, on the left or right, would be willing to tolerate an Iraq that was run by al Qaeda as Gaza is now run by Hamas. And while the Israelis can reinvade Gaza with relative ease--as they are almost sure to do in the next several months--the United States cannot just walk back into Iraq.

Yesterday morning, about 450 veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan rallied outside the Capitol to support General Petraeus and the mission in Iraq. "We’re here to tell Congress not to micromanage the war from air-conditioned offices on Capitol Hill," said Pete Hegseth, a decorated Iraq veteran and executive director of Vets for Freedom, the veterans’ group dedicated to victory in Iraq that organized the rally.

Over a dozen lawmakers, including John McCain, spoke at the rally before the Vets for Freedom flooded Senate and House office buildings to attend over 300 meetings with senators, congressmen, and congressional aides. Certainly each of these veterans has accomplished much greater feats than lobbying legislators, but today marked a significant milestone for Vets for Freedom. Conceived at the end of 2005 by a handful of soldiers and Marines who gathered in a bar in Charleston, S.C., the group now boasts a membership of over 22,000. "This is the single largest gathering of Iraq and Afghanistan combat veterans since the war began," Hegseth told his fellow veterans. "You guys are continuing the battle here at home in the arena of public opinion."

Yesterday’s events were part of a Vets for Freedom "national heroes tour" that hit 21 cities in 14 states. "We’ve reached well over 20 million Americans through local media outlets--about $2 million worth of earned media," Hegseth told me. "So much of what we're trying to refute is this idea that veterans are a bunch of victims of Bush's war who came back with injuries that they can't overcome," he added. "We want to show that we're proud of our service."

At least 17 veterans are demonstrating their continued leadership by running for Congress as Republicans. "As a soldier, it often appears that our civilian leadership in Congress gravely misunderstands the consequences of victory or defeat in Iraq and Afghanistan," said David Bellavia, a cofounder of Vets for Freedom and a Medal of Honor nominee who is vying for Republican Tom Reynolds’ open seat in western New York.

The left is thrilled that Senator Biden yesterday got Ambassador Crocker to 'admit' that it's more important to defeat al Qaeda along the Pakistan/Afghanistan border than it is to defeat them in Iraq. Next up: getting FDR to admit that it's more important to defeat the Nazis in Berlin than in Paris, getting Ike to admit that it's more important to bring down the U.S.S.R. than to preserve a free and independent South Korea, and getting JFK to admit that Cuba is a distraction from the 'real' war effort.

The left seems not to understand that the central battlefield in a war is not always the enemy's home base. Sometimes we fight on multiple fronts, and it's important to win on all. Sometimes 'victory' is impossible if you fail to defeat the enemy in different places. Would we still have enjoyed victory in the Cold War if we had decided that Greece, Korea, Cuba, East Berlin, Vietnam, and Nicaragua were 'distractions?'

There are plenty of other reasons that Biden's question is silly. The first is the false premise that we must choose one or the other. The reason we have the 'inflated' defense budget that liberals complain about is that we don't want to be forced to choose one battlefield or another. The U.S. military is designed to fight multiple conflicts simultaneously.

The second is that not all battles are fought the same way. The only way Biden's question makes sense is if he believes we must choose between committing tens of thousands of troops in Iraq or Pakistan. As Fred Kagan points out, no Democrat is seriously considering this.

Earlier today the president presented the Medal of Honor to the parents of Petty Officer 2nd Class Michael Monsoor, a Navy SEAL who threw himself on a grenade in order to save his buddies during an intense firefight in Ramadi. You can read more about it here, but also worth checking out is this piece from THE WEEKLY STANDARD archive.

Michael Fumento arrived in Ramadi just days after Monsoor had been killed in action. In his report for this magazine in November 2006, Fumento wrote:

Nobody was killed operating out of Corregidor while I was there, but three days before my arrival, the 19-man SEAL platoon I had photographed and videotaped in combat earlier this year lost its second member, Navy Petty Officer 2nd Class Michael Monsoor. He threw himself on a hand grenade to save three of his buddies. He was the second SEAL killed in Ramadi and second killed in Iraq. The first, Petty Officer 2nd Class Marc Allan Lee, was lost in August. Anyone who harbors the notion that SEALs are as tough on the inside as they are on the outside is wrong. After I wrote an obit on Lee for my blog, many who knew him opened up their hearts to me. When I blogged on the death of Monsoor from Ramadi, I got the same reaction.

Included in the piece is one of the emails from a SEAL in Monsoor's unit. Monsoor was also featured on the cover of the magazine that week--he is one of the men in the photo at right.

As sad is it is, I don't think Monsoor's death was for naught. A recent piece in Men's Health, which was written by a reporter embedded with a team of SEALs, revealed what may have been the origin of the Anbar Awakening. It all started with a team of Navy SEALs operating in Ramadi that fall. It doesn't take a big leap of faith to figure that this was Monsoor's team--and that he likely played a pivotal role in starting a movement that would bring Western Iraq back from the edge of the abyss. Read the Fumento piece, and if you haven't read the piece in Men's Health, do yourself a favor.

McCain mixed up Sunni and Shia before catching himself about half a second later.

Lefty bloggers are in a state, and the DNC has already posted the item.

This is getting beyond ridiculous. Sometimes people make mistakes, even liberals--like when Arianna Huffington, in the midst of attacking McCain for just such a gaffe, confused Iran with Syria. Does she really not know the difference between the two? Of course not.

Or how about during today's hearings when Ted Kennedy referred to "inter-sectarian" violence in Basra. Five and a half minutes into the video above, as Petraeus tries to explain the situation in Basra to Kennedy, Kennedy cuts him off:

But we're over in Iraq to take on al Qaeda and here we've got the Maliki government moving in to battle inter-sectarian violence that's taking place which many believe can enhance the possibilities of civil war.

From that quote it is not entirely clear that Kennedy does understand the difference between inter- and intra-sectarian violence--or that the situation in Basra is not at all likely to lead to an inter-sectarian civil war, but is in fact likely to lessen the possibility of such an outcome. But how about we give Teddy the benefit of the doubt and assume he's not a complete moron but just misspoke. Do we think maybe the left would give McCain the same courtesy, especially since McCain, at least, corrected himself immediately afterward?

Senator Lieberman began his questioning of Petraeus with this:

Thanks, Mr. Chairman. General, Ambassador, thank you for your extraordinary service in the cause of freedom in Iraq. I must say that as I listen to your testimony, which is encouraging and yet quite realistic, and in my opinion, not overstated. You’ve told us that the strategy associated with the surge is working, progress has been made, but it’s entirely reversible. You’ve been very frank about some of the problems that we still face.

What I’m about to say - with respect to my colleagues who have consistently opposed our presence in Iraq - as I hear the questions and the statements today, it seems to me that there’s a kind of hear no progress in Iraq, see no progress in Iraq, and most of all, speak of no progress in Iraq.

And thus a Democrat perfectly articulates his own party's disposition at today's hearings.

From Amb. Crocker's opening statement:

· The first is at the national level in the form of legislation and the development of Iraq’s parliament. In September, we were disappointed that Iraq had not yet enacted some key pieces of legislation. In the last several months, however, Iraq’s parliament has formulated, debated vigorously, and in many cases passed legislation dealing with vital issues of reconciliation and nation building.

· A pension law extended benefits to individuals who had previously been denied them because of their service under the former regime.

· The Accountability and Justice Law (de-Ba'athification reform), passed after lengthy and often contentious debate, reflects a strengthened spirit of reconciliation, as does a far-reaching Amnesty Law.

From Petraeus's opening statement:

· Security in Iraq is better than it was when Ambassador Crocker and I reported to you last September, and it is significantly better than it was 15 months ago when Iraq was on the brink of civil war and the decision was made to deploy additional US forces to Iraq. A number of factors have contributed to the progress that has been made.

o First, of course, has been the impact of increased numbers of Coalition and Iraqi Forces. You are well aware of the U.S. surge. Less recognized is that Iraq has also conducted a surge, adding well over 100,000 additional soldiers and police to the ranks of its security forces in 2007 and slowly increasing its capability to deploy and employ these forces.

o A second factor has been the employment of Coalition and Iraqi Forces in the conduct of counterinsurgency operations across the country, deployed together to safeguard the Iraqi people, to pursue Al Qaeda-Iraq, to combat criminals and militia extremists, to foster local reconciliation, and to enable political and economic progress.

o Another important factor has been the attitudinal shift among certain elements of the Iraqi population. Since the first Sunni “Awakening” in late 2006, Sunni communities in Iraq increasingly have rejected AQI’s indiscriminate violence and extremist ideology. These communities also recognized that they could not share in Iraq’s bounty if they didn’t participate in the political arena. Over time, Awakenings have prompted tens of thousands of Iraqis—some, former insurgents—to contribute to local security as so-called “Sons of Iraq.” With their assistance and with relentless pursuit of Al Qaeda-Iraq, the threat posed by AQI—while still lethal and substantial—has been reduced significantly.

This is a development I have been expecting for some time. The longer Muqtada al Sadr remained outside the political sphere and used his Mahdi Army militia to attack the Iraqi security forces and government, the greater the pressure became for the government to ban his political party and militia. The fighting in Basra has shown that Sadr and his movement/militia are now anti-state elements, and the disparate political parties are seeking to pressure Sadr to disband his Madhi Army or face being banned from political activity. Per the AP:

Iraq's major Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish parties have closed ranks to force anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr to disband his Mahdi Army militia or leave politics, lawmakers and officials involved in the effort said Sunday...

The first step will be adding language to a draft election bill banning parties that operate militias from fielding candidates in provincial balloting this fall, the officials and lawmakers said. The government intends to send the draft to parliament within days and hopes to win approval within weeks.

"We, the Sadrists, are in a predicament," lawmaker Hassan al-Rubaie said Sunday. "Even the blocs that had in the past supported us are now against us and we cannot stop them from taking action against us in parliament."

Everyone rushed to declare the Maliki government defeated and neutered after the Basra operation hit a speed bump in its opening phase. But the push to force Sadr to disband his Mahdi Army or face the political wilderness suggests otherwise.

In case you missed it, PBS has been airing a superb, grunt-level documentary on the War in Iraq called Bad Voodoo's War. Director Deborah Scranton, employing her revolutionary "virtual embedding" process made famous by The War Tapes, masterfully weaves an inside-out story of the "Bad Voodoo" platoon (great name, no?) sent to Iraq as part of the surge.

Here's the trailer:

Aside: don't confuse soldiers exercising their most treasured right (to gripe) with political messaging. Though some of the quotes in the trailer might give the impression that BVW is just another anti-war film, it isn't.

PBS will be airing the doc for the rest of the week, but if you miss it or don't have TiVo, you can watch online here.

McCain has one son serving in Iraq and another may be on the way. I follow this stuff pretty closely and while I'm sure McCain has made some reference to his sons on the trail, I can't recall it, and it's certainly not something that comes up often. Neither have I heard about McCain's sons from any of his surrogates. Which is what makes this comment from TPM reporter Eric Kleefeld so creepy:

Democrats are facing what could prove a major difficulty in the general election: During the fall campaign, John McCain might have not one, but two sons serving in Iraq.

For the Democrats, that possibility could make it much more difficult to hit McCain on Iraq policy. And while McCain himself has avoided mentioning it in his speeches, at least for now, you can bet his surrogates will be more than happy to bring it up every time the Dems hit him on the war.

So McCain's boys are going to Iraq and liberals want to know how this affects their prospects in the general election. As always, I'm overwhelmed by their support and concern for the troops. Clinton and Obama do nothing but hit McCain on the war and his sons have never been mentioned in response, by McCain or anyone else. You know who did politicize his son's service in Iraq? Jim Webb. And TPM loved it.

Michael Yon's must be seen to be believed:

The few remaining serious troublemakers are being hacked off and mulched in these incessant operations, which gives the enemy no rest (in the old days, when they were murdering Iraqis and Americans by the thousands, AQI used Tal Afar for training and R&R). These types of terrorists used to lay up with prostitutes in downtown Tal Afar, which isn’t so uncommon – for years brothels have been an excellent source of information against al Qaeda from Mosul to Baghdad. The al Qaeda terrorists don’t save themselves for the seventy two virgins promised to suicide bombers. They love drugs, prostitutes, and the power of the gun.

You'll have to click through for the photographic evidence. Regulars here will note that I do not hesitate to post pictures of scantily clad women. I do this for you, the reader. But jihadist hookers...I have to draw the line somewhere, even if Debbie Stabenow's husband doesn't.

Also, Yon's book, Moment of Truth is set for release at the end of the month. I was able to extort a free copy in exchange for the plug, but somebody has to finance his operation, so buy a copy. The guy is a national treasure, pony up and do your part.

Interesting discussion from Tom Ricks at the Washington Post:

As the experts poke the ashes, I think the emerging consensus is that Moqtada al-Sadr won more than he lost, because he and the government agreed to a cease-fire. That makes him 3 for 3 in taking on state powers (the U.S. in the previous two rounds, and now the Baghdad government). If nothing else, this guy is a survivor.

What puzzles me most is the role Iran played, especially in ending the fighting. There are lots of rumors that it brokered the ceasefire, but I have seen nothing definitive. If it did, that indicates that the Tehran government felt it had something to lose through the fighting.

Well, yeah. Iran's plan is to keep the United States--and to some extent, Israel--occupied on the military, diplomatic, and political fronts while they build a small arsenal of nuclear weapons. Their strategy, from a military perspective, has been very effective so far. Through effective use of proxies in Basra and southern Lebanon, Tehran exploits the West's greatest weakness--their low tolerance for chaos and unending conflict. All this while they strictly avoid direct contact with US/NATO/Israeli forces.

Al-Qaeda Iraq has been decimated by the surge, so if the Iranians lose Sadr and his militias, their ability to sow the seeds of discord in Iraq is sharply reduced. It's important to remember that Iran doesn't expect to win battlefield victories in Iraq, but rather to exploit the chaos there as a means to their nuclear end.

If they knock out the fledgling Iraqi government and kill a few Coalition troops in the process? All the better.

Because it sounds a lot like "insurgent" to me.

The report from CENTCOM:

Soldiers from 4th Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division, were traveling in a combat patrol to investigate a possible point of origin for an indirect fire attack when their Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle was struck by an improvised explosive device.

Immediately after the IED attack, Soldiers discovered a second IED in the area and attempted to secure it.While attempting to secure the IED, they were attacked with indirect fire, rocket propelled grenades and small-arms fire from a house in the vicinity of the IED strike.

An aerial weapons team was called in to support the Soldiers on the ground. A mortar team was spotted on the roof of the house where the attack was coming from, and the AWT defended the Soldiers on the ground and killed 25 criminals. One Soldier was injured in the IED attack.

"We will defend ourselves when attacked by armed criminals," said Lt. Col. Steven Stover, MND-B spokesman. "We are not the aggressors, but we will defend ourselves and the Iraqi people with all resources available to us."

I'm arguing semantics, of course. What's important is that all 25 assumed room temperature upon contact with 4BCT.

The Washington Post had the story yesterday:

That September morning, Monsoor and a group of SEAL snipers took up position on a residential rooftop as part of an operation to push into a dangerous section of southern Ramadi. Four insurgents armed with AK-47 rifles came into view, and the SEAL snipers opened fire, killing one and wounding another. Loudspeakers from a mosque broadcast calls for insurgents to rally, and residents blocked off nearby roads with rocks.

Insurgents shot back at the SEAL position with automatic weapons from a moving vehicle and fired a rocket-propelled grenade at the building. The SEALs knew that more attacks were inevitable but continued their mission of protecting the troops clearing the area below, according to an official account.

Monsoor's commander repositioned him in a small hidden location between two SEAL snipers on an outcropping of the roof, facing the most likely route of another insurgent attack. As Monsoor manned his gun, an insurgent lobbed up a hand grenade, which hit Monsoor in the chest and bounced onto the roof.

"Grenade!" Monsoor shouted. But the two snipers and another SEAL on the roof had no time to escape, as Monsoor was closest to the only exit. Monsoor dropped onto the grenade, smothering it with his body. It detonated, and Monsoor died about 30 minutes later from his wounds.

The president will present the Medal of Honor to Monsoor's family on April 8. This is only the third Medal of Honor awarded since the start of the Iraq war. According to Wikipedia, 246 such Medals were awarded for service in the Vietnam War. Is it possible that there are so many fewer acts of conspicuous gallantry in this war than in Vietnam? I find that hard to believe, but it seems like hurling one's self onto a grenade is about the only way to qualify anymore. And it doesn't help that the press takes almost no interest in stories of heroism, preferring to focus instead on the few veterans who return from Iraq to commit horrible crimes against their family and neighbors. As Noah Pollak points out at Contentions, the New York Times made no mention of the award in the paper's print edition, running only a three-line blurb from the AP online.

McCain ripped Obama today over his comments yesterday that he would leave a "strike force" in Iraq after withdrawing the bulk of U.S. forces. McCain said "I think it might be appropriate to describe exactly what that means? Does that mean 100,000 troops, where are they based? What is their mission?" According to Carl Cameron, the response from the Obama campaign was that "McCain has Obama's policies wrong. The strike force would be in the region, not in Iraq." Except, that's not what he said yesterday, and it's not what he trumpets on his web site or what he had said in previous remarks.

In a March 2008 speech, Obama said: "In order to end this war responsibly, I will immediately begin to remove our troops from Iraq. We can responsibly remove 1 to 2 combat brigades each month. If we start with the number of brigades we have in Iraq today, we can remove all of them in 16 months. After this redeployment, we will leave enough troops in Iraq to guard our embassy and diplomats, and a counter-terrorism force to strike al Qaeda if it forms a base that the Iraqis cannot destroy."

In a January 2007 speech: "My plan allows for a limited number of U.S. troops to remain as basic force protection, to engage in counter-terrorism, and to continue the training of Iraqi security forces."

And from his website: "Obama will immediately begin to remove our troops from Iraq. He will remove one to two combat brigades each month, and have all of our combat brigades out of Iraq within 16 months. Obama will make it clear that we will not build any permanent bases in Iraq. He will keep some troops in Iraq to protect our embassy and diplomats; if al Qaeda attempts to build a base within Iraq, he will keep troops in Iraq or elsewhere in the region to carry out targeted strikes on al Qaeda."

McCain has not specified the number of troops he will keep in Iraq or the length of time they will be kept there. Obama has willfully distorted this position and implied that McCain wants to keep U.S. forces enmeshed in a century long war in Iraq. Fine. Distorting the other guys position is part of the game--or at least that's how the "old politics" worked. But Obama can't have it both ways. His Iraq plan also involves keeping an unspecified number of troops in Iraq for an unspecified length of time. The difference? McCain's objective is victory. Obama's objective, like the details of his strike force, remains unspecified.

Max Boot wrote in yesterday's Washington Post that "Islamist militants were emboldened by the Soviet Union's retreat from Afghanistan in 1989." That seems like such an obvious understatement, but Yglesias and others take issue:

Did the emboldened militants follow the Red Army home from Afghanistan? No. Rather, a few years after Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan the USSR collapsed under the weight of accumulated economic problems that had been exacerbated by the long and fruitless war in Afghanistan.

I don't think anyone, Boot included, would argue that the Soviet Union fell as a direct result of the defeat in Afghanistan. That was only a piece of the puzzle. But still, there is no doubt that the mujahideen followed the Red Army back to Moscow after the war. The slaughter at Beslan, the apartment bombings in Moscow--there have been any number of terrorist acts perpetrated on Russian soil by people who fought against the Red Army in Afghanistan. And there's no doubt that the shift in Chechnya from nationalist to religious-based opposition to Russian rule was heavily influenced by the success of the jihadists in Afghanistan. It would be unwise for the left to hold up the Soviet retreat from Afghanistan as an example for the United States in Iraq.

The headline from the Los Angeles Times:

Iraq showdown made Sadr stronger, backers say

Besides quoting Sadrists praising Sadr, the article quotes an Iraqi officer lamenting the poor performance of Iraqi security forces. The Iraqi military may not have performed well, which is troubling, if it's true. I'm skeptical that an accurate assessment is possible so quickly after the fighting stops. What we do know: the Mahdi Army have accepted a cease-fire, and they have "retreated from the streets." Given those facts, it seems likely that the Sadrists didn't make out quite as well as they claim. Islamic radicals tend not to 'retreat' under a cease fire after they've won a major victory.

The fighting in Basra might rightfully be seen as Iraq's critical and long-awaited "Altalena Moment." This refers to an incident in Israel's 1948 War of Independence, shortly after Israel proclaimed its statehood. Newly elected Prime Minister David Ben Gurion declared that all Jewish militia groups either had to turn in their guns, or accept amalgamation into the newly formed Israel Defense Forces (IDF), built around the pre-Independence Haganah. The Irgun Zvai Leumi, the militantly nationalist militia (in reality a terrorist group) led by Menachim Begin, did not accept this decree. Instead, it had a load of weapons and ammunition shipped from Europe to Israel on a converted LST renamed the Altalena. When Ben Gurion learned of the Altalena's arrival off Haifa, he ordered all the armaments aboard turned over to the IDF. Begin refused, unless the Irgun got its cut and was allowed to remain independent. Ben Gurion ordered the Altalena to remain offshore and instructed the IDF to stop any attempts to offload the cargo.

Begin had the Altalena run up on the beach at Haifa, and Irgun members began unloading the weapons. IDF troops then cordoned off the beach and ordered the Irgun both to stop unloading and to put down their arms. A firefight broke out, and Ben Gurion ordered the IDF to sink the Altalena. It was a seminal moment in the history of Israel: would the IDF refuse to fire on fellow Jews (a very sticky proposition, given that the Holocaust ended just three years earlier)? If they would not obey the order to fire, would Israel be able to establish itself as a modern nation state, a state in which military power resided exclusively with the legitimate government?

The IDF obeyed orders. The ship was shelled, caught fire, and sank. A number of the Jewish crewmen were killed or wounded. More members of the Irgun were killed and wounded in street fighting throughout the beach district of Haifa. Most of the survivors, including Menachim Begin, were arrested. For a while, Ben Gurion's name was mud. But he had made his point: the government of Israel would continue to exercise civilian control over the military. Jewish militias would not be allowed to compete for power. Authority was vested in the political process, and not in violent action. Israel would survive, and thrive, as a democratic state.

This stands in marked contrast to the experience of the Palestinians, who have, throughout their tragic history, been unable to transcend the tyranny of the gunmen. Mahmood Abbas proved unwilling or unable to disarm the factions--not merely Hamas, but his own Fatah militia as well. The security forces of the Palestinian Authority remain impotent against these and other armed militias, and thus the PA itself is incapable of wielding authority against the will of the gunmen. Had there been a Palestinian "Altalena Moment" (e.g., if Abbas had taken action against Hamas rocketeers firing into Israel), there might be more hope for peace between Israel and Palestine today. At least, the Israelis would actually have someone with whom to negotiate a settlement.

In Iraq, there was always the danger that Malaki's government would only take action against Sunni factions, and not against fellow Shi'ites. In particular, there was the strong possibility of Sadr setting himself up as a state-within-a-state, and thus a constant conduit of unrest and Iranian interference. By taking strong action against Sadr and other Shi'ite intransigents, Malaki is demonstrating to some extent that he places national above factional interests. If he succeeds in suppressing the Mahdi Army--by far the most numerous and dangerous of the Shi'ite private armies--this will go a long way to establishing the credibility of the Iraqi Security Forces, and thus, the legitimacy of the Malaki government and its successors. In short, it could be a decisive turning point in the political as well as the military struggle, the moment at which Iraq's transition to a functioning representative democracy and a legitimate nation-state became irreversible.

Like Obama, I don’t want to suggest I’ve absorbed all of the facts, but a couple of thoughts.

First, it's too soon to tell the outcome. As Roggio pointed out on Friday, "this operation needs to develop before it can be called a success or failure, and that will take weeks or even months." We and our Iraqi allies were going to confront these militias at some point. Ever since al Qaeda was routed from Anbar, critics of the war pointed to the remaining Shia militias as the insurmountable obstacle to victory. Now we're finally seeing some action on that front--it's not clear that this particular action will be successful, but at least there's movement, and from the Iraqis.

Anthony Cordesman says the fighting "is better seen as a power grab, an effort by Mr. Maliki and the most powerful Shiite political parties to establish their authority over Basra and the parts of Baghdad that have eluded their grasp…" That doesn't sound so bad to me.

Faced with an intractable problem, Maliki bet big and confronted the most powerful militia in Iraq. When one looks at the rest of the Middle East, it's not at all apparent that the region's more problematic regimes are inclined to do the same. Take Pakistan, where broad swaths of the country are controlled by militias, the Taliban, al Qaeda. If only Musharraf had the resolve to violently confront these threats to his government's sovereignty. It's the same in the Palestinian territories, where Mahmoud Abbas must rely on the IDF to keep him in power. Abbas might be willing to confront Hamas, but he is unable. And in Lebanon, a weak central government lacks the resolve to strike at Hezbollah. It strikes me as a good thing that Maliki can and will go after those who directly challenge his government--even to the New York Times it looks like progress:

For starters, the Shiite rebels are fighting mainly Iraqi soldiers, rather than Americans. Their leader, Moktada al-Sadr, is not defending against attacks from a redoubt inside the country’s most sacred shrine, but is issuing edicts with a tarnished reputation from an undisclosed location, possibly outside the country. And Iraq’s prime minister, a Shiite whom Americans had all but despaired would ever act against militias of his own sect, is taking them on fiercely.

Finally, Allah links this quote from a former political adviser to the American military in Baghdad: "The Sadrists will likely view their survival as victory." If we were to leave Iraq, surely they'd set their sights higher.

Update: And as Roggio notes in his latest, a lot of them aren't surviving.

A photo in today’s New York Post features two men in Basra. Both wear masks that completely cover their faces. One stands with an assault rifle in his hand and what appears to be electrical cord in the other. His comrade-in-arms is hunched over a bucket and what appears to be a rock. The caption:

Shiite thugs prepare a roadside bomb in Basra yesterday, where government forces have ratcheted up their campaign against the terrorists.

It would be nice if the unidentified photographer (the credit goes to AFP/Getty Images) gave a heads-up to the proper authorities. However, I’m betting journalistic objectivity takes precedent. Somebody’s got to look out for our way of life, after all.

Glenn Reynolds has posted a fresh interview with Michael Yon. I just listened, but Glenn sums it up nicely:

(1) It's likely to get worse before it's better; (2) No one seems to doubt Iranian backing for the violence; (3) This isn't about religion, it's about money and power; and (4) Unlike Al Qaeda in the north, this isn't so much a fight to the finish as violence as a negotiating tactic.

Go listen to the whole thing, and if you missed it be sure to check Roggio's post from earlier today, "Give War a Chance." Roggio just got back yesterday from a few weeks in Iraq, and he adds some fresh reporting from MNF-Baghdad as well.

And the title of this post, good stuff from this album.

The Iraqi military launched Operation Knights' Assault against the Mahdi Army and other Iranian-backed Shia terrorist groups in Basra three days ago, and the media is quick to call the operation a failure. The New York Times has declared the military offensive in Basra has "stalled" just two days after the operation began, with the Mahdi Army controlling some neighborhoods and Iraqi armored vehicles are unable to enter some neighborhoods as the streets are too narrow.

The Times Online is claiming the Mahdi Army has overrun checkpoints throughout Baghdad, some without a fight. The Multinational Division Baghdad categorically denied this in a follow-up question to THE WEEKLY STANDARD earlier this morning.

"All checkpoints and ISF [Iraqi security forces] buildings are in ISF and/or Coalition control. No checkpoint is in enemy control," said Lieutenant Colonel Steve Stover, the Public Affairs Officer for the 4th Infantry Division and Multinational Division Baghdad. "There were several cases where the ISF needed our assistance (and more often than not--did not) and either CF 9Coalition forces ground or air responded and either reinforced or took back in a couple occasions the CP or IP (Iraqi Police) building--none of that happened today."

Keep in mind how the newspapers and television were quick to declare the initial invasion in Iraq a quagmire as a sandstorm slowed the U.S. assault force in southern Iraq for several days. Also remember the media was quick to declare the surge a failure in its opening month in February 2007, despite the fact that sufficient forces would not be in place until June 2007.

Military operations take time to develop, and, as the saying goes, the enemy also gets a vote. The Mahdi Army has been entrenched in these neighborhoods in Baghdad and Basra, so it is natural that it will take time to root out the militias in these areas. This operation needs to develop before it can be called a success or failure, and that will take weeks or even months.

One thing to keep in mind is Muqtada al Sadr, the leader of the Mahdi Army, is pressing for an end to the fighting. If Sadr's Mahdi Army was doing so well, why would he call for an end to the fighting? Another item to consider is that U.S. troops have yet to enter the fighting in full force. Other than some skirmishes in Baghdad--the U.S. has killed at least 60 Mahdi Army fighters in Baghdad the past three days--support in Basra has been limited to air, logistical, and special operations support. The U.S. military has yet to fully weigh in as it is letting the Iraqi Army take the lead in Basrah. Sadr knows this.

The headline is for emphasis; what the Democrats are really promising is to end all our efforts in Iraq -- including anti-terror efforts, training of Iraqi security forces, and anything else you can think of:

More than three dozen Democratic congressional candidates banded together yesterday to promise that, if elected, they will push for legislation calling for an immediate drawdown of troops in Iraq that would leave only a security force in place to guard the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad...

The starkest difference between the group's proposal, dubbed a "Responsible Plan to End the War in Iraq," and those embraced by many senior Democrats and the party's presidential candidates is that it rejects the idea of leaving U.S. troops on the ground to train Iraqi security forces or engage in anti-terrorism operations. The group instead calls for a dramatic increase in regional diplomacy and the deployment of international peacekeeping forces, if necessary.

While it is both novel and reckless to propose withdrawing all U.S. troops from Iraq, these Democrats share one critical element with the Democrats already elected to power in Washington -- they refuse to commit to a timetable. Nevertheless, the anti-war wingnut crowd should really believe them this time, since they pinky-swore it.

The document also seems to follow the Obama Doctrine on Iraq: we're getting out as fast as we can, regardless of conditions on the ground, and we reserve the right to get back in if we learn that al Qaeda is, in fact, operating in the country.

CNN's Michael Ware on the violence in Basra:

This is a window into the future of Iraq after the American withdrawal...

What many people suggest is that we're looking at a situation that will be akin to Lebanon in the 1980s, with vicious, well-armed militia proxy wars where all the factions are supported by one foreign sponsor or another.

But this will be Lebanon on steroids.

The British withdrew from the city in September. The Times (London) puts the choice facing the British government in stark terms: more combat troops or "an ignominious withdrawal and handing over control of Basra to the Americans."

Congressional Republicans are looking into possible disciplinary measures for Jim McDermott and Jim Thompson, two House Democrats who traveled to Baghdad on the eve of votes in Congress to approve the Iraq War. The third member, David Bonior, has since retired from Congress.

Murthanna al Hanooti was arrested yesterday for working on behalf of the former Iraqi regime. Federal prosecutors say that he helped pay for the trip using funds that came from the Iraqi Intelligence Service. Shakir al Khafaji, another person who accompanied the representatives and made arrangements for their meetings with senior Iraqi government officials, has not been charged. However, he had a long record of working on behalf of Saddam Hussein and hosted "expatriate conferences" -- days-long propaganda workshops -- financed and sponsored by the former Iraqi regime. Al Khafaji moderated one panel during which the U.S. was accused of "terrorism" and "genocide" against the Iraqi people for its backing of UN sanctions. Al Khafaji was later named in reports detailing individuals who had taken Oil-for-Food allocations from Saddam Hussein. But it was his work on behalf of Saddam Hussein before the trip that has piqued the interest of congressional Republicans, in large part because he had been reported by the news media and because Saddam Hussein had thanked him for his efforts.

If these Democrats were traveling with at least one person known to have worked on behalf of the Iraqi regime, shouldn't they have known that it was possible the Iraq regime was behind their trip? Did these Democrats even ask those questions? And if not, why not?

“We're just beginning to look at the facts of the case," says Kevin Smith, a spokesman for Minority Leader John Boehner, who is traveling in the region. "But it is certainly troubling that three Members of the House – including a Member of the Democratic Leadership – would act as pawns for a genocidal dictator. Their trip was nothing more than a propaganda tool for Saddam and his murderous regime.”

One specific concern is that Jim Thompson is currently a member of the House Intelligence Committee. Some congressional Republicans want to know if service on that committee is consistent with having served -- even unwittingly -- as a propaganda tool for Saddam Hussein.

David Axe flags what looks like a a major scoop in the latest issue of Men's Health. Apparently the SEALs allowed a reporter from the magazine to embed with their unit in Anbar last fall. The story:

But in November 2006, Chris W.’s SEAL team, sensing an opening, used an al-Qaeda attack on a local Iraqi sheikh as its first wedge. Working with U.S. Army units stationed in the area, SEAL Team 4 wiped out about 30 of the sheikh’s enemies, set up sniper positions overlooking his home and village, and began a brisk lend-lease program of supplies, such as generators, water pumps, and ovens. In return, the sheikh encouraged his followers to become Iraqi police and army recruits. That was the start of the now famous, if controversial, Anbar awakening.

Awesome. The piece is called "Bravery and How to Master It." Read the whole thing.

The simple answer: Iran.

As I understand it, a few of days ago U.S. troops started going after elements within Sadr's militia that maintain close ties to Iran. The response was a hail of mortar and rocket fire in Baghdad and Basrah. The attacks killed quite a few people in the Green Zone and elsewhere. At the same time, Sadr, from his hideout in Iran, made a Gandhiesque call for non-violent protest. It seems clear that Sadr and Tehran are playing a game of good-cop-bad-cop/bait-and-switch/pick your metaphor. Gen. Petraeus kept it simple: Iran is shooting at Americans. Unfortunately, some seem to prefer the storyline that Sadr is leading a "peaceful protest," and that the violence is the work of rogue elements within his Mahdi militia.

The willingness to ignore his role in the violence only gives Sadr more street cred by distancing him from the current flare-up, and it allows the Iranians to get away with murder (literally), while sending the message that this type of thing can and will go unpunished. But in the run-up to Gen. Petraeus and Amb. Crocker appearing on the Hill, the Iranians and their proxies will do whatever they can to increase the political pressure in Washington. So far the strategy seems to be working.

Last night came the news that Saddam Hussein's regime paid for a high-profile trip taken by three congressional Democrats to Baghdad in the fall of 2002. The visit, by Democratic Representatives David Bonior, Jim Thompson, and Jim McDermott, was brokered by Muthanna al Hanooti, a Michigan resident with close ties to the Iraqi regime. Hanooti is being prosecuted for spying on behalf of Saddam's regime.

Reacting to the latest news, Mike DeCesare, a spokesman for Jim McDermott, one of the three congressmen, said his boss wasn't aware that the money came from Saddam Hussein's regime when he accepted it. He told me the same thing in 2004, when I asked him about the $5,000 McDermott had accepted for his legal defense fund from Shakir al Khafaji, one of Saddam Hussein's biggest U.S. boosters before the war. Khafaji, who accompanied the congressmen and made the arrangements for their visit, had run "expatriate" conferences in Baghdad for Saddam as recently as 2000. He also provided $400,000 to former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter for Ritter's propaganda film on behalf of the former Iraqi regime. In an interview back in 2001, Ritter told me that Khafaji was "openly sympathetic" with Saddam Hussein.

All of this was public record -- available to the lawmakers with a Google or Nexis search. But they went anyway. Reacting to the news yesterday, Jim Thompson pleaded ignorance.

"Obviously, had there been any question at all regarding the sponsor of the trip or the funding, I would not have participated."

Thompson and McDermott would have us believe that they visited a sworn enemy of the United States -- one who had tried to assassinate a former president and declared that the "Mother of all Battles" had never ended -- without doing even the most basic research about who was funding their trip? That's hard to believe. And Bonior, who was from Michigan and had taken money from al Khafaji before, had no idea that he was backed by Saddam Hussein? When I spent a week reporting in Michigan for a story on Iraqi exiles, virtually every Iraqi I spoke to told me about al Khafaji and his dirty money. Is is possible that nobody ever mentioned this to Bonior, who recently chaired John Edwards' presidential campaign, before he traveled to Iraq with al Khafaji? Again, hard to believe.

In any case, they knew well that they would be used as propaganda tools before they left. This is how we put it in a piece on the trip back in October 2002:

EVEN BEFORE the Baghdad boys left Iraq, media outlets throughout the Middle East gleefully highlighted divisions in the U.S. government and the travels by the "antiwar" congressmen. The Iraq Daily, for example, published by Saddam's Ministry of Information, printed daily updates of the trip and posted them in English on their website.

For example, a September 30 report says, "the members of the U.S. Congress delegation has underlined that this visit aims to get acquainted with the truth of Iraq's people sufferings due to ongoing embargo which caused shortage in food and medicine for all Iraqi people." (That article appeared next to a report on Saddam's continuing financial support for the families of Palestinian suicide bombers or, to use the paper's formulation, "intrepid Palestinian uprising martyrs." Also in that issue is an article by American white supremacist Matthew Hale, "Truth About 9-11: How Jewish Manipulation Killed Thousands.")...

So how does it feel to be used as a propaganda tool against your own country? McDermott, who was asked that question by CNN's Jane Arraf when he was still in Baghdad, said it feels fine. "If being used means that we're highlighting the suffering of Iraqi children, or any children, then, yes, we don't mind being used."

Once again? "We don't mind being used."

In travel news today, AP reports:

Saddam Hussein's intelligence agency secretly financed a trip to Iraq for three U.S. lawmakers during the run-up to the U.S.-led invasion, federal prosecutors said Wednesday.

The three anti-war Democrats made the trip in October 2002, while the Bush administration was trying to persuade Congress to authorize military action against Iraq. While traveling, they called for a diplomatic solution.

You remember seeing the Representatives--Jim McDermott of Washington, David Bonior of Michigan, and Mike Thompson of California--glowering at the news camera every night as they implored America to let Saddam provide a training ground for terrorists and torture his people in peace. Normally I’d say it’s a good thing they weren’t doing this on the taxpayers’ dime, but in this case the phrase "rock and a hard place" comes to mind.

Their little junket reminded me Ted Kennedy’s outreach program to the Soviet Union in 1983. As reported by the CNS News service, "Kennedy offered to assist Soviet leaders in formulating a public relations strategy to counter President Reagan's foreign policy and to complicate his re-election efforts." Whether he took a fee for his consulting work is unknown.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but here are four guys who, as members of Congress, actively worked against America’s best interests during dicey times. I’m loathe to use a loaded word like “traitors” but at the very least, they’re ungrateful louts with no concept of shame.

Sleeping with the enemy under the guise of loving your country: the p.r. strategy favored by Democrats 4-1.

Jason Gluck of the Institute for Peace writes today on an unnoticed milestone in Iraq's effort to establish a 'normal' democratic government:

First, Iraqi lawmakers deployed a technique familiar to anyone who lives in a developed democracy: logrolling, the essence of political compromise. Iraqis bundled together three laws that each constituency—Shia, Sunnis, and Kurds—prioritized differently. By treating the three issues as one legislative package, each group could make trade-offs to get what it wanted most...

For Iraq, this was a radical departure from the issue-by-issue approach that failed so spectacularly in 2007. Last year, Iraqis failed to achieve consensus over such critical, contentious matters as the hydrocarbon legislation, the constitutional review, and resolution of the disputed territories. Like the laws passed on February 13, these issues are connected in a way that could lead to a larger compromise. For example, Iraqi Arabs might find the Kurds’ annexation of Kirkuk more palatable if the Kurds agree to let the central government manage natural resources and give it more leeway to coordinate national legislation. In this way, the February 13 compromise could serve as a road map for resolving other deadlocked disputes and moving forward on national reconciliation.

Read the whole thing.

Over at the Danger Room, David Axe writes of the British posture in southern Iraq:

With no forward bases, no intelligence apparatus in the city of Basra, less nimble equipment and no political will to suffer a single additional casualty in Iraq, the roughly 3,000 Brits remaining in the country can do little but wait out the current fighting.

To which Noah Shachtman adds:

So the Brits bail, and Basra is "essentially divided up among Shi'ite party mafias, each of which had its own form of extortion and corruption," as Anthony Cordesman puts it today. Isn't this an extremely bad omen for an American troop withdrawal, under a would-be President Obama or Clinton? How would a country-wide draw-down be different than this local one?

It's a good question. And there are other examples of what a unilateral withdrawal in the face of terror looks like: Southern Lebanon and Gaza. In each case, the Israelis withdrew under the assumption that it was their presence that was instigating violence. In each case, the results were disastrous, as terrorist groups (with Iranian support) rushed to fill the vacuum left by the departure of the IDF. Now we see the same thing playing out in Basra.

Even for the Democrats, an Iraq dominated by Iranian-backed terrorist groups is an intolerable outcome. And yet neither has offered a compelling case for why the American people should expect a different result.

Politico reports:

Though it’s not exactly an accurate representation of McCain’s views, Democratic strategists view the “100 years” remark as the linchpin of an effort to turn McCain's national security credentials against him by framing the Vietnam War hero as a warmonger who envisions an American presence in Iraq without end.

We've all known this was going to be a problem for a while now. On February 13, I wrote that "neutralizing this particular line of attack will be a top priority for the McCain camp." It only took them six weeks, but they are finally going to try and do just that when McCain gives a major speech on Iraq tomorrow. It was a foolish thing for McCain to have said, but it was also precisely the kind of straight talk that earns him so much affection--and it had the added benefit of being true. American forces, when they are victorious, set up permanent bases.

But here's the question. If we're going to "end the war in Iraq," the Democrats favorite euphemism for declaring defeat and going home, what about Afghanistan? Has anyone asked Barack or Hillary how long they plan to maintain U.S. forces in that country? If they really plan on fighting on to victory in the "good war," a straight answer would probably be something like 100 years. It would seem that any honest debate on this point would lead to a rather simple conclusion: victory takes 100 years, defeat takes 18 months. Give or take.

Update: JVL wrote a column on this for the Inquirer a few weeks ago. He runs down the countries that have based U.S. troops long after combat had come to an end, including Iceland. Well worth your time.

Michael O'Hanlon at the Brookings Institution today on the men behind the surge (via Think Progress):

I want to call them the Lombardis of this war. … And in addition to Fred [Kagan] and Ken [Pollack] who have been two of the most important people. Andy Krepinevich is another important think tanker. Retired Gen. Jack Keane from the outside. A small group of people inside the administration, smaller than it should have been, but people like Meghan O’Sullivan. […]

These people did two things that I think would have made Vince Lombardi proud. One, they stuck with it, and they persevered through difficult times. And two, they stayed focused on fundamentals.

So what does that make Harry Reid? The Terrell Owens of the Iraq war?

The International Longshore and Warehouse Union West Coast local is set to strike:

The International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) has announced a one-day strike against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, calling for a “No Peace No Work Holiday” to take place May 1. They are calling on the AFL-CIO, the Change to Win Coalition, and other unions to do the same. This is a major development for both the labor movement and antiwar movement in the U.S...

The strike will take place on an historic day. May 1, also known as May Day, is International Worker's Day. Unlike much of the rest of the world, mass demonstrations on this day have not been a tradition in the U.S., despite its origins in Chicago in the 1880s.

The United States doesn't commemorate International Worker's Day, preferring instead to salute the nation's workers on Labor Day. That's largely because of the close association between May 1 and international socialism. Strangely, International Worker's Day occurs on May 1 to pay tribute to 'the Chicago Martyrs' -- the labor organizers executed after the Haymarket Riot in 1886. Despite its American origin, May 1 is a day of celebration for communists -- not for most Americans.

So leaving aside the question of why the nation's dockhands are going to strike in support of America's' enemies in Iraq -- and even Afghanistan! -- why would they choose to do so on May 1? I mean, why would any union so clearly signal that it does not have America's interests at heart? Where are the Pinkertons when you need them?

Over the weekend Haaretz reported:

Saddam Hussein's intelligence service collected information on dozens of sites in Israel, including airports, other transportation centers, as well as scientific and religious centers that were thought to be potential targets for attacks....

This information emerged following the release of documents captured during the American invasion in 2003 and made available as part of a West Point program to evaluate the lessons of the war in Iraq.

In addition to the detailed collection of intelligence on potential Israeli targets, the documents also show that Saddam's intelligence was following closely the links between Iran and Hezbollah and the potential that such ties could provide Iran to operate in the territories and in North Africa.

One wonders what organizations, exactly, Saddam was planning to collaborate with in North Africa, since nearly all of them are affiliated to some degree with al Qaeda. Joscelyn has posted a lot of material on the connections that were developed. And then there's this:

A video recording of a meeting between Saddam and Yasser Arafat on April 19, 1990, showed Saddam threatening to assassinate then president George Bush. "We may not be able to reach Washington, but we could send someone with an explosives belt to Washington," Saddam told Arafat, three months before the invasion of Kuwait.

Apparently Saddam was hip to suicide vests long before they became the must-have Middle East fashion accessory, and he wanted to use them on American targets. Was Saddam all bluster? He did subsequently attempt to kill Bush 41. The report also notes that Saddam said he "possessed chemical weapons" and "would not hesitate" to use them against Israel.

John Hinderaker at Power Line writes, "…our principal news media outlets have fabricated an alternative reality around the Iraq war by simply misreporting the facts." That’s true, especially with regards to Saddam’s terror ties. And, as Power Line has noted on a number of occasions, the media has gotten a lot of help from partisan members of the U.S. Intelligence Community (both current and former).

Take, for example, this recent column by Michael Isikoff of Newsweek concerning the Iraqi Perspectives Project’s recently released study of Saddam’s intelligence files. You would never know from Isikoff’s piece that the report contains documents linking Saddam’s regime to six terrorist groups that are all part of Osama bin Laden’s terrorist empire, including two groups that form the core of al Qaeda. Nor, would you know that Saddam’s regime cooperated with these groups at various times. Instead, all you’ll find is spin.

The spin is provided by Paul Pillar, a former high-ranking analyst at the CIA who has made his anti-Bush, anti-Iraq war inclinations known. Pillar has spun tale after tale about Saddam’s regime and al Qaeda. He is heavily invested in the notion that Saddam’s "secular" regime did not work with the Islamists of al Qaeda. Pillar is, quite clearly, a man with an agenda. Here are the most relevant lines from Isikoff’s piece:

The report did find plenty of evidence that Saddam's regime had close ties to other (mainly Palestinian) terror groups and had maintained contacts with some radical Islamic movements-including, according to one 1993 document, Egyptian Islamic Jihad. Last week Vice President Dick Cheney said the document showed there was a "link between Iraq and Al Qaeda." But Pillar notes the Egyptian group-headed by Ayman al-Zawahiri-didn't merge with Al Qaeda until years later. "This is the same kind of word game they played before the war," Pillar says.

This is nonsense. Pillar is pretending that because Zawahiri’s Egyptian Islamic Jihad (the "EIJ") had not formally merged with bin Laden until 1998 or 2001 (depending on who you talk to) that a connection between Saddam and the EIJ doesn’t represent a link to al Qaeda. On the contrary, as I pointed out in a recent post over at Power Line, Zawahiri and the EIJ began to work closely with bin Laden in the mid-1980’s--long before their formal merger. Numerous sources, including Zawahiri’s lawyer in Egypt, Montasser al-Zayyat, have reported on the long-standing relationship. Lawrence Wright has also provided numerous details in his reporting for the New Yorker and in his book The Looming Tower.

A clear pattern emerges from the available evidence: Zawahiri and the Egyptian Islamic Jihad were major influences on Osama bin Laden early on, long before their formal merger. There were, of course, tactical differences from time to time, but this never stopped the two groups from working hand-in-glove. In fact, as Wright, al-Zayyat, and other sources have reported, it was Zawahiri and his EIJ lieutenants who steered bin Laden towards the absolute jihadist approach that defines al Qaeda. They were, in fact, always as much a part of al Qaeda as bin Laden himself. It is highly significant, therefore, that the IIS document Pillar and Isikoff refer to says that the IIS and the EIJ had an agreement in place to collude against Hosni Mubarak’s regime in Egypt. (Subsequent documents show that Saddam wanted the EIJ to focus on hunting Americans in Somalia. I’ll have more on this in the near future.)

The evidence is rather unambiguous in this regard. So, we are left with two options: (1) Pillar doesn’t know this, or (2) He is spinning this story to serve his own agenda. Either way, Isikoff’s blind reliance on Pillar to dismiss this important connection between Saddam’s regime and al Qaeda does not inspire confidence. Of course, as Robert Novak has reported, Isikoff has relied heavily on Pillar in the past.

Reuters reports:

The U.S. military said on Saturday it had hampered al Qaeda's ability to recruit new members in Iraq by capturing or killing many of the people who make slick videos used to attract disaffected young Muslims.

U.S. military spokesman Rear Admiral Greg Smith said that in the past year, 39 al Qaeda members in Iraq responsible for producing and disseminating videos and other material to thousands of Internet Web sites had been captured or killed....

Smith said there has been a steady decline in videos broadcast on 5,000 pro-al Qaeda Web sites since June 2007, roughly coinciding with falling levels of violence across Iraq.

I heard Gen. Wallace speak on this subject a little more than a year ago. At the time he said that al Qaeda had a "better information operations capability" than the U.S. military and that the group had benefited from the "sanctuary of cyberspace." It looks like killing the bad guys has had a salutary effect on the situation (surprise!). Last fall Roggio wrote about the hunt for AQI's propaganda cells, which have been a top priority of U.S. forces since last summer.

The BBC brings us the story of Noor Salman, a 16-year-old girl living in Baghdad whose father was murdered by militants in August of 2006. It's not a happy story, but the girl is happy about one thing:

Our city is not what it once was and studying is not easy. Walking to school became a dangerous journey, although recently things are better.

I wonder, how many school children in the world have to go to school fearing they may not make it home. That's what we had to do.

I'm so happy that things are better on that front - but we are all aware that they could easily change again.

Notice the use of the past tense when talking about the dangers of walking to school. Would her father be alive if the U.S. hadn't invaded Iraq? Probably. Would somebody else's father have been murdered by Saddam in that alternate universe? Probably. But that's a moot point and here's a young girl saying that things are better, that security has returned, and that she is happy. I'd be curious to know what the Democrats think this country owes a young Iraqi girl like Noor, if anything.

Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Times reported yesterday on the situation in Fallujah: "War-ravaged Iraq city 'alive again.'" I don't think we owe anything to the people of Fallujah, but if we are to decisively defeat al Qaeda and its ilk in Iraq, bringing peace, security, and prosperity to Anbar is essential. Thankfully, it looks like things are better on that front as well.

Iran isn't working with al Qaeda in Iraq? Tell that to some of al Qaeda's opposition. The NEFA Foundation has provided a transcript of an interview with a commander from "Hamas in Iraq," an insurgency group that was formerly a faction of the 1920 Revolution Brigades:

Q: "Is there any evidence of cooperation between the Al-Qaida network and Iran that you are aware of, since you are in a province bordering Iran?"

A: "We have irrefutable evidence of Iran supplying Al-Qaida with weaponry. This was exposed because of the weapons they used in the Diyala province several days ago - specifically on December 25, 2007. Our mujahideen from the Uthman bin Affan Brigade dismantled a car bomb in the Al-Onaq neighborhood in the region of al-Hadid [west of Baquba]. Hidden inside the car were three large rockets, three antitank mines, a quantity of TNT, 53 handgrenades, and a quantity of chlorine hidden inside the gas tank. [These items] were confiscated, and upon examining weapons, we discovered that they were Iranian-made. We also obtained confessions from some of those we have captured from [Al-Qaida] that they had transformed their wounded to border hospitals."

It is never safe to take these characters at their word. But he certainly does not have a pro-American bias. He refers to America as the "enemy" and says that his group will "never, ever cooperate" with American-led forces.

In addition, nothing he says about Iran's support for al Qaeda is all that surprising. As we have mentioned previously, the U.S. military and the new Iraqi intelligence service both confirm that Iran is hunting al Qaeda's enemies, not al Qaeda itself, inside Iraq. Iran is on al Qaeda's side in Iraq--not ours and not the Iraqi citizens. Some in the media seem to have trouble accepting this reality. As Steve Schippert explains, that includes the Boston Globe.

As Steve Hayes and I have previously discussed, the new IPP study documents the relationship between Saddam Hussein’s regime and Ayman al Zawahiri’s Egyptian Islamic Jihad ("EIJ"). It is worth reproducing the language from the IPP study in this regard once again: "Saddam supported groups that either associated directly with al Qaeda (such as the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, led at one time by bin Laden's deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri) or that generally shared al Qaeda's stated goals and objectives."

Indeed, this is a very important fact. Zawahiri has worked closely with Osama bin Laden since the mid-1980’s, when both terror chieftains were organizing and directing recruits for the jihad in Afghanistan. Zawahiri and other Egyptian terrorists, in particular Sheikh Omar abd al-Rahman (aka the "Blind Sheikh"), played instrumental roles in al Qaeda’s evolution. Most likely, al Qaeda would not have become nearly as effective without them. Almost all of the key roles inside al Qaeda were filled by EIJ members early on, and the EIJ remains at the core of al Qaeda to this day. It is no exaggeration to say that Zawahiri is as much a part of al Qaeda as Osama bin Laden himself.

But there is more to the story of Saddam’s relationship with the EIJ. If you take a closer look at one of the documents the IPP study relies upon, you will find that Saddam agreed to work with not only Zawahiri’s EIJ, but also, more broadly, the so-called "Afghan Arabs"--the veterans of the Afghanistan jihad against the Soviets who made up almost the entire first generation of al Qaeda--in general. (Of course, the EIJ’s members were themselves "Arab Afghans.")

The key is the January 25, 1993 memo from the Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS) to Saddam that I discussed in my first post in this series. Recall that just one week earlier, on January 18, Saddam had ordered his minions to use terrorists to "hunt" the Americans throughout the Muslim world, and especially in Somalia. One of the groups the IIS identified as capable of fulfilling this mission was Zawahiri’s EIJ.

According to the January 25 memo, Iraqi Intelligence had recently met with a leading figure in Sudan’s ruling National Islamic Front party, Sheikh Ali ‘Uthman Taha. It was Taha who negotiated a renewal of the relationship between Saddam’s Iraq, on the one hand, and Zawahiri and the Blind Sheikh’s sister organizations on the other. Sudan was then playing host to the Arab Afghans.

A must-read from the Wall Street Journal by Dan Senor and Roman Martinez leads with this quote from Moqtada:

"I have failed to liberate Iraq, and transform its society into an Islamic society."

Senor and Martinez trace Sadr's ascent, and his decline:

In 2007, the U.S. military shifted approach, putting in place for the first time a comprehensive counterinsurgency strategy backed by a surge of troops to support it. The new strategy paid large dividends against al Qaeda and Sunni insurgents, as attacks dropped to 2005 levels and Iraqi deaths due to ethno-sectarian violence declined 90% from June 2007 to March 2008. As Sunni attacks against Shiite civilians declined, so did the rationale for Sadr's authority.

As the International Crisis Group concluded, one "net effect" of the surge "was to leave the Sadrist movement increasingly exposed, more and more criticized and divided, and subject to arrest."

There are three major forces at play in Iraq: the surge, the Awakening, and the Sadr cease-fire. There is a lot of debate about which of these forces is dominant, i.e. which is most responsible for the turnaround in security. I think in the case of the Awakening, it's clear that the surge facilitated the progress in Anbar, but was not solely responsible for it. In fact, the Awakening may have reinforced the surge by freeing up units from that once-restive province to augment operations in the Baghdad belts. In any case, Senor and Martinez make a compelling case here that the surge has been critical to beating back the Sadrists in Baghdad.

This other quote from Sadr--"one hand cannot clap alone"--is offered without much context, but if Sadr required chaos in order to leverage support for his Islamist agenda, as Senor and Martinez suggest, then the surge has clearly chopped off that other hand.

Key graph:

“The surge has done more than turn the situation in Iraq around -- it has opened the door to a major strategic victory in the broader war on terror. For the terrorists, Iraq was supposed to be the place where al Qaeda rallied Arab masses to drive America out. Instead, Iraq has become the place where Arabs joined with Americans to drive al Qaeda out. In Iraq, we are witnessing the first large-scale Arab uprising against Osama bin Laden, his grim ideology, and his murderous network. And the significance of this development cannot be overstated. The terrorist movement feeds on a sense of inevitability, and claims to rise on the tide of history. The accomplishments of the surge in Iraq are exposing this myth and discrediting the extremists. When Iraqi and American forces finish the job, the effects will reverberate far beyond Iraq's borders. Osama bin Laden once said: "When people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature they will like the strong horse." By defeating al Qaeda in Iraq, we will show the world that al Qaeda is the weak horse.

It's true that the Awakening in Anbar represented the first time that Muslims violently rejected the totalitarian ideology of al Qaeda. One can debate endlessly whether the success of the surge created room for the Awakening or whether the success of the Awakening created room for the surge, but the result is the same. And we have routed al Qaeda from most of the country--the final blow is likely to come soon in Mosul.

The Israeli experience of the last few years offers a real lesson here. They pulled out of Lebanon--unilaterally and not out of military necessity--and Hezbollah claimed victory. More than that, Hezbollah became the vanguard of global jihad. Likewise in Gaza. The Israelis withdrew--unilaterally and not out of military necessity--and Hamas claimed victory. More than that, they overthrew Fatah and radicalized the Palestinian population (really, they are more radical).

If we pull out of Iraq, al Qaeda will claim victory--that much is certain. It will also grow stronger--who would stop it? This is an intolerable outcome. Five years after the initial invasion, nearly 4,000 U.S. troops have died, thousands more have been injured, and much work remains to be done. But it is foolish to think that things couldn't get worse if U.S. troops were to leave, and there is every reason to believe that U.S. troops are finally on the path to victory.

The Times Caucus Blog reports:

As critical as she is about the Bush administration’s conduct of the Iraq war, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton gave a relatively rare shout-out to the military’s top man in Baghdad, General David Petraeus, calling him “an extraordinary leader and a wonderful advocate for our military.”

That's rich. Not too long ago she was telling the general, literally to his face, that one would have to have a “willing suspension of disbelief” to buy into his testimony on the progress of the surge and dodging calls to categorically condemn the disgraceful Moveon.org ad that targeted Gen. Petraeus.

Eli Lake reports for the New York Sun:

The news that American forces had captured Iranians in Iraq was widely reported last month, but less well known is that the Iranians were carrying documents that offered Americans insight into Iranian activities in Iraq.

An American intelligence official said the new material, which has been authenticated within the intelligence community, confirms "that Iran is working closely with both the Shiite militias and Sunni Jihadist groups." The source was careful to stress that the Iranian plans do not extend to cooperation with Baathist groups fighting the government in Baghdad, and said the documents rather show how the Quds Force — the arm of Iran's revolutionary guard that supports Shiite Hezbollah, Sunni Hamas, and Shiite death squads — is working with individuals affiliated with Al Qaeda in Iraq and Ansar al-Sunna.

But yesterday the New Republic's film critic, Chris Orr, assured us that "Al Qaeda is, after all, a Sunni group, and Iran, a Shiite nation," so we needn't worry about collaboration between the two. Maybe the military just got the translation wrong.

Over at The Corner, Michael Leeden responds to my question about when, if ever, the Bush Administration claimed Iraq had an "operational" relationship with al Qaeda.

He writes:

What about Colin Powell's speech to the United Nations on the eve of Operation Iraqi Freedom? That day, with George Tenet sitting behind him, he noted that Zarqawi — who we later learned was the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq — had operated out of Baghdad.

I was surprised when Powell said that, because I had previously noted that Zarqawi had long operated out of Tehran (and received Iranian support for al-Qaeda in Iraq after the defenestration of Saddam). But he certainly said it, and you can't ask for a more "operational" tie than that, or so it seems to. me.

I should have been clearer. I take "operational" to mean that the two entities collaborated on attacks, that is, worked together to pull off an "operation." Did the Bush Administration ever directly make such a claim, as so many reporters now seem to imply by suggesting that a report that found no evidence of an "operational relationship" is a repudiation of administration claims? Again, it's possible that they did say this and I just missed it.

FWIW, I would put the Zarqawi evidence in the category of "providing sanctuary" or "safe haven." And I don't think anyone disputes the fact that Zarqawi transited in and out of Iran with ease.

Twice in recent days, articles in the Washington Post have suggested that Bush Administration officials claimed before the Iraq War that Iraq and al Qaeda had an "operational relationship."

Last week, Karen DeYoung made the accusation directly when she wrote: “An examination of more than 600,000 Iraqi documents, audio and video records collected by U.S. forces since the March 2003 invasion has concluded that there is ‘no smoking gun’ supporting the Bush administration's prewar assertion of an ‘operational relationship’ between Saddam Hussein and the al-Qaeda terrorist network, sources familiar with the study said.”

And today, Peter Baker and Josh Paltrow wrote: "The vice president used the opportunity to reassert that there was 'a link between Iraq and al-Qaeda' before the U.S. invasion, despite reports that have found no operational ties between the two."

(When did the Bush Administration claim that Iraq had an "operational relationship" with al Qaeda before the war? It may have happened, but I missed it if it did. The closest I’ve seen to such an assertion came when a State Department official named Matthew Daley gave testimony to a congressional committee shortly after the war began in which he worried about an "operational relationship" between Iraq and Abu Sayyaf, the al Qaeda affiliate in the Philippines. My recollection is that Bush Administration officials pretty consistently made the argument that waiting for an "operational relationship" to develop would be imprudent, hence the need to preempt that threat.)

Let me make a more basic point. A relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda need not have been "operational" to have warranted military action to eliminate it. The Clinton Administration, for example, argued repeatedly that Iraq supplied assistance to al Qaeda on chemical weapons. Such as relationship, if that's as far as it went, would not have qualified as "operational," but certainly would have been -- and was -- cause for tremendous concern.

But "no operational relationship" seems to be the new media-invented standard. This is from the Post piece that ran today:

Former congressman Lee H. Hamilton (D-Ind.), co-chairman of the bipartisan commission that investigated the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and found "no operational relationship" between Iraq and al-Qaeda, said Cheney was parsing words to create a false impression.

"They just keep repeating it -- the vice president uses the word 'links," Hamilton said in an interview. 'Nobody really denies that. The question is 'Was there an operational relationship?,' and there's no evidence of that."

But Hamilton is wrong. Lots of news articles expressly denied a link between Iraq and al Qaeda. ABC News reported that the new Iraq/Terrorism study was "the first official acknowledgment from the U.S. military that there is no evidence Saddam had ties to Al Qaeda." The New York Times headlined its story: "Study Finds No Qaeda-Hussein Tie." NPR did the same: "Study Finds No Link Between Saddam, bin Laden." Even the Washington Post, the newspaper that quotes Hamilton, headlined its report: "Study Discounts Hussein, Al-Qaeda Link."

In any case, Hamilton once defended Cheney from precisely the charge he is now making, something that might have been helpful to Post readers trying to judge his credibility on the issue. In June 2004, Hamilton was asked specifically about Cheney. He replied:

I must say I have trouble understanding the flak over this. The Vice President is saying, I think, that there were connections between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein's government. We don't disagree with that. What we have said is just what [Republican co-chairman Tom Kean] just said: We don't have any evidence of a cooperative or collaborative relationship between Saddam Hussein's government and al Qaeda with regard to the attacks on the United States. So it seems to me that sharp differences that the press has drawn, that the media has drawn, are not that apparent to me.

And what was it that 9/11 co-chairman Tom Kean had just said? "There was no question in our minds that there was a relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda."

Really, where does that Dick Cheney get off saying that there was a relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda?

As discussed in my first post in this series, Saddam tasked his minions with hunting Americans throughout the Muslim world and especially in Somalia in 1993. The Iraqi Intelligence Service identified eleven groups with which it had relations and that were capable of carrying out the mission. One of the groups identified was the Jamiat-e-Ulema Islam party, otherwise known as the JUI, in Pakistan. According to a U.S. Government translation, here is what the IIS had to say about its relationship with the JUI in its January 25, 1993 memo:

Jam’iyyat ‘Ulama’ Al-Islam (J.U.I.), (translator’s note: "The Society of Islamic Scholars")

1. It was established in 1948 and is considered one of the political parties that influence the Pakistani arena and in particular the northern region [Baluchistan] and Punjab. It is headed by Mulana (translator’s note: or Mawlana) Fadil Al-Rahman.

2. It depends on its financing on its organizations in Pakistan and foreign aid from Iraq and Libya.

3. Secretary of the Party, Mulana Jawid Ahmad Nu’mati, has a close relationship with our apparatus since 1981 and is willing to perform any mission that he would be assigned.

The JUI has been one of the strictest Islamist parties in Pakistan. It is as far from secular as you can get; its goal has been to turn Pakistan into a theological state. Moreover, the JUI has practiced an extremist brand of Islam for decades. Yet, according to this IIS document, the JUI was receiving aid from both Iraq and Libya--two nominally secular states headed by ruthless dictators who one would not think of as especially religious, to say the least. Not only was the JUI receiving aid from Iraq, the IIS reported a "close relationship" with the group’s secretary since the early 1980’s and his willingness "to perform any mission that he would be assigned." Since this was written in the context of Iraq’s quest to launch anti-American terrorist operations in Somalia and elsewhere, "any mission" would presumably include just such a task. However, it is not known if the JUI ever contributed to such attacks in any way, and it might well not have.

What the IIS memo does not note is that the JUI was then training future cadres of Taliban members. Indeed, the JUI is widely considered the mother organization for the Taliban. The U.S. government’s translation of the IIS document notes that the JUI is headed by "Mulana Fadil Al-Rahman." There are a number of alternative spellings of Rahman’s name floating around, but a more common English translation of his name is Maulana Fazlur Rahman.

But, as Steve Schippert has previously noted, you can just call him the "godfather" of the Taliban.

(Note: Over the next few days, I will be blogging about documents captured in post-Saddam Iraq. Some of these documents were analyzed in a new study written for the military by the Institute for Defense Analyses. That report is part of the Iraqi Perspectives Project and is titled, Saddam and Terrorism: Emerging Insights from Captured Iraqi Documents. Hereafter, I refer to the study as the "IPP Report.")

On January 18, 1993, Saddam’s personal secretary sent a "very urgent" note to the director of the Iraqi Intelligence Service. Saddam wanted his goons to "hunt" Americans present on Arab soil:

Follow up to our memo 7184/K on 20 Dec 1992, the [Baath] Party has decided to snipe (translator’s note: or hunt) Americans that are present on Arab soil, particularly in Somalia, utilizing Arab, Asian Muslims or friendly elements.

The note was directed to the head of Saddam’s foreign intelligence service, who was told he "should meet to study the method of performing the said directive and to notify me of your opinion as soon as possible."

One week later, on January 25, 1993, the Iraqi Intelligence Service sent a reply to Saddam:

In reference to your memo Top Secret Personal and Very Urgent 425/K dated 18 Jan 1993. Below are the groups with whom our agency has relations, and who have elements dispersed on the Arab land and have the expertise to carry out the aforementioned mission.

Eleven terrorist groups/individuals were listed including: (1) the Abu Nidal Organization (aka the Fatah Revolutionary Council), (2) the Palestinian Liberation Front, or "PLF" (3) Force 17, (4) an obscure group called the "Organization of AI-Jihad and AI-Tajdid," (5) the Al-Murabitun Organization, (6) The Palestinian Abd-al-Bari AI-Duwayk (Abu Dawud), (7) Abd-al-Fattah Abd-al-Latif Fakhuri (Abu Yihya), (8) the Egyptian Islamic Jihad Organization, or "EIJ" (9) the Jamiat-e-Ulema Islam, or "JUI", (10) the Islamic Afghani Party, or Hezb-e Islami and (11) the Pakistani Scholars Party.

Saddam was clearly keeping some nasty company. The Abu Nidal Organization was one of the most deadly terrorist organizations of the 1980’s, having killed hundreds and wounded hundreds more.

But what is particularly interesting about this document is that the IIS noted its relationship with two parties that are directly allied with Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda (the Egyptian Islamic Jihad Organization, which is one of the core groups that makes up al Qaeda, and the Islamic Afghani Party, which has allied with bin Laden since the 1980’s) and one group which is, in many ways, the mother organization for the Taliban (the Jamiat-e-Ulema Islam).

In coming posts we will explore the ties between Saddam’s regime and these three groups, including what Saddam’s intelligence files say about these relationships. It is clear that Saddam saw his support for all of these organizations in the context of striking his enemies, especially Americans.

After all, the IIS said these groups, including core al Qaeda members, were ready to "hunt" Americans.

When the 9-11 Commission’s final report was published in July 2004, some in the press were quick to trumpet one line in the report that appeared to dispense with the issue of Saddam’s ties to al Qaeda. The Commission reported on a number of contacts between the two sides, but ultimately concluded: "to date we have seen no evidence that these or earlier contacts ever developed into a collaborative operational relationship."

For many, that was the end of the story. But re-read the Commission’s report carefully (as some did at the time) and you realize it found a number of disturbing threads tying Saddam’s Iraq to al Qaeda. For example, the Commission reported that Ayman al Zawahiri set up at least one and maybe two meetings between al Qaeda and Saddam’s regime in 1998. The Commission explained that Zawahiri was in a position to act as a liaison since he had "ties of his own to the Iraqis." The Commission did not explain further.

But now, thanks to the release of a new study on Saddam’s ties to terrorism, we learn more about Zawahiri’s "ties" to Iraq. The Iraqi Perspectives Project report (which we’ve discussed here, here, and here) explains:

Saddam supported groups that either associated directly with al Qaeda (such as the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, led at one time by bin Laden's deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri) or that generally shared al Qaeda's stated goals and objectives.

As Steve Hayes pointed out again this morning, the study cites an Iraqi Intelligence document dated March 18, 1993. The translation of the document provided in the study begins:

We list herein the organizations that our agency [IIS] cooperates with and have relations with various elements in many parts of the Arab world and who also have the expertise to carry out assignments indicated in the above directive [the cited directive has not been discovered yet].

Ayman al Zawahiri’s Egyptian Islamic Jihad is one of the nine terrorist organizations then discussed in the extracts of the document cited:

Islamic Jihad Organization [Egyptian Islamic Jihad]

- In a meeting in the Sudan we agreed to renew our relations with the Islamic Jihad Organization in Egypt. Our information on the group is as follows:

- It was established in 1979.

- Its goal is to apply the Islamic shari' a law and establish Islamic rule.

- It is considered one of the most brutal Egyptian organizations. It carried out numerous successful operations, including the assassination of Sadat.

- We have previously met with the organization's representative and we agreed on a plan to carry out commando operations against the Egyptian regime.

So we now know that Zawahiri’s "ties" to Iraq included an agreement to cooperate on "commando operations against the Egyptian regime." This would seem to be evidence of an "operational collaborative relationship." That Saddam’s regime was willing to sponsor the EIJ’s operations should be a major blow to those who would argue that Saddam and al Qaeda could never, ever cooperate. It sheds new light on the 9/11 Commission’s report, and raises a number of questions.

Reason publishes a ridiculous rant today from Terry Michael on the surge. Michael is a former DNC press secretary and heads up the "non-partisan" Washington Center for Politics & Journalism. He's not much of a journalist, but his politics are clear:

When it comes Iraq, neoconservative true believers have been allowed to set the bar of "success" below ground level. In this, they're aided by media siding with power instead of challenging it, all while congressional Democrats cower in their cloak rooms....

Except for a few pieces in left-liberal journals and blogs, Democrats have simply allowed neoconservative propagandists to define the terms of what has become a one-sided monologue about "victory," voiced by elective warriors who employed deception about phantom weapons of mass destruction to market a multi-trillion dollar travesty; claimed a paper tiger thug was our enemy, when the real culprits of the 9/11 attacks still hide in caves, not spider holes; imagined Iraqi embrace of pluralistic democracy, in a tribal culture with no indigenous movement for it; and fielded an imperial American occupying force, drawing jihadists to Baghdad while fomenting civil war that raged outside a surreal "Green Zone," as our puppet government dithered.

I guess what bothers me about this kind of hysterical shrieking is that Reason would publish it. The guy is so hot he couldn't even be bothered to throw in the occasional period. And he puts it right there, nobody but a few "left-liberal journals and blogs" will publish this kind of nonsense because any objective analysis of the situation in Iraq shows that there has been a dramatic improvement in security as a result of the surge. Reasonable people can argue over whether that's enough to justify a continued presence, whether the country will tear itself apart if U.S. forces leave, but no serious journal is calling the regime in Iraq a puppet government, or ranting about "an imperial American occupying force." It's a DNC press release...and what self-respecting libertarian would care what a Democratic party hack has to say about the surge anyway? Could Reason find nobody to write a rational take-down of the surge? Maybe not.

Hillary Clinton spoke this morning at George Washington University, where she spent most of her time trying to rebut "the claim that withdrawal is defeat." I can see a situation where Clinton might be right. Like when the Russians withdraw to Moscow--that's not defeat (it's also not particularly pretty). But just saying "withdrawal is not defeat" doesn't make it so. In fact, it's patently obvious that withdrawal is defeat, which is why most advocates for withdrawal premise their arguments on the (mistaken) notion that the war is already lost (see Reid, Harry).

Here's how Clinton rationalizes:

Now, withdrawal is not risk-free, but the risks of staying in Iraq are certain. And a well-planned withdrawal is the one and only path to a political solution. The only way to spur the Iraqis to take responsibility for their own future and to ensure that we don't bear that responsibility indefinitely. The only way to spur other countries to do their part to help secure stability in the region....

I will bring our troops home, work to bring stability in the region, and replace military force with a new diplomatic initiative to engage countries around the world in helping to secure Iraq’s future.

It's a ridiculous idea. "Other countries" won't assist in bringing stability to Iraq with 160,000 U.S. troops in the country to guarantee their security. Clinton can't possibly believe that the Germans are going to deploy to Iraq with no assistance from the United States. Maybe she thinks the Chinese will. And the only thing Iraqis are likely to take responsibility for absent a strong U.S. presence is killing each other in industrial fashion. Think Rwanda with AKs. Which is why the McCain camp is licking their chops for this fight. One adviser writes the WS Blog in response to Clinton's remarks this morning:

Unfortunately, Hillary Clinton’s evolving Iraq policy -- against withdrawal not too long ago, opposition to the surge and now for retreat no matter the cost -- would plunge that nation into large-scale violence, convulse the region, energize al Qaeda and other terrorists, and gravely damage U.S. national security. We welcome that debate, and who is best prepared to answer that 3:00 am call.

By the way, Americans seem pretty certain who they want answering the phone at 3 am (hint: he may answer the call in the form of a Beach Boys song).

Baghdad, Iraq
Sitting in the U.S. Embassy just blocks from the bombed out headquarters of the former Iraqi Intelligence Service, Vice President Dick Cheney said today that a new Pentagon study issued last week confirms Bush administration claims that Saddam Hussein's Iraq supported a broad range of terrorists groups, including al Qaeda. But he dodged a question about why the Bush administration has failed to discuss the report in public, saying that the report was relatively new and that he hadn't had time to talk to the press office about it.

The Pentagon report highlights what Cheney called "extensive links" between Egyptian Islamic Jihad and the former Iraqi regime. A captured Iraqi Intelligence document dated March 18, 1993, lists the EIJ as one of nine terrorist organizations the regime was actively supporting at the time. "We have previously met with the organization's representative and we agreed on a plan to carry out commando operations against the Egyptian regime."

Cheney was pressed by a reporter who noted that the Executive Summary of the Pentagon report claims "no direction connection" between Iraq and al Qaeda. "Seems pretty clear to me that it was," he said, pointing out that Zawahiri's Egyptian Islamic Jihad later merged with al Qaeda.

The Pentagon report has been widely mischaracterized as refuting Bush administration claims that Iraq supported jihadist terror, including al Qaeda. Those reports are incorrect.

"Because Saddam's security organizations and Osama bin Laden's terrorist network operated with similar aims (at least in the short term), considerable overlap was inevitable when monitoring, contacting, financing, and training these outside groups. This created both the appearance of, and in some ways, a 'de facto' link between the organizations. At times, these organizations would work together in pursuit of a shared goal but still maintain their autonomy and independence because of innate caution and mutual distrust."

Elsewhere the report reveals that the Iraqi went so far as to train Islamic radicals throughout the 1990s:

“Two movements, one pan-Arab and the other pan-Islamic, were seeking and developing supporters from the same demographic pool. Captured documents reveal that later IIS activities went beyond just maintaining contact [with Islamist terrorists]…the Iraqi General Military Intelligence Directorate was training Sudanese fighters inside Iraq.”

Real Clear's Tom Bevan reports:

A new poll of 2,200 Iraqis conducted by ABC News, the BBC, ARD German TV and the Japanese broadcaster NHK shows much improved attitudes across virtually every aspect of life in Iraq - though perhaps especially on the security front.

The numbers are impressive. Twice as many people now expect things to be better in a year as felt that way in August of last year (from 23 to 46 percent). Well over half of Iraqis (62 percent) now describe the security in their neighborhood as "good." And 55 percent (compared to 39 percent in August) describe their own lives as "going well."

I take this with a grain of salt. As John Burns noted in yesterday's Times, "any attempt to measure opinion in Iraq is fatally skewed by intimidation." But, given that the same questions were asked in August, this is just another set of data that contradicts the efforts of domestic critics to paint the surge as a failure. Iraqis appear to see a different result.

A new Pentagon report on Iraq and Terrorism has the news media buzzing. An item on the New York Times blog snarks, "Oh, By the Way, There Was No Al Qaeda Link." The ABC News story that previews the full report concludes, "Report Shows No Link Between Saddam and al Qaeda."

How, then, to explain this sentence about Iraq and al Qaeda from the report's abstract: "At times, these organizations would work together in pursuit of shared goals but still maintain their autonomy and independence because of innate caution and mutual distrust"? And how to explain the "considerable overlap" between their activities which led not only to the appearances of ties but to a "de facto link between the organizations?" (See the entire abstract below.)

And what about this revelation from page 34? "Captured documents reveal that the regime was willing to co-opt or support organizations it knew to be part of al Qaeda -- as long as that organization's near-term goals supported Saddam's long-term vision." (The example given in the report is the Army of Muhammad in Bahrain, a group the Iraqi Intelligence Service describes as "under the wings of bin Laden.")

And there is this line from page 42: "Saddam supported groups that either associated directly with al Qaeda (such as the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, led at one time by bin Laden's deputy, Ayman al Zawahiri) or that generally shared al Qaeda's stated goals and objectives."

Really? Saddam Hussein "supported" a group that merged with al Qaeda in the late 1990s, run by al Qaeda's #2, and the New York Times thinks this is not a link between Iraq and al Qaeda? How does that work?

Anyone interested in the "strong evidence that links the regime of Saddam Hussein to regional and global terrorism" -- that language comes from this report, too -- should read the entire thing for themselves, here.

Here is the abstract:

Captured Iraqi documents have uncovered evidence that links the regime of Saddam Hussein to regional and global terrorism, including a variety of revolutionary, liberation, nationalist and Islamic terrorist organizations. While these documents do not reveal direct coordination and assistance between the Saddam regime and the al Qaeda network, they do indicate that Saddam was willing to use, albeit cautiously, operatives affiliated with al Qaeda as long as Saddam could have these terrorist-operatives monitored closely. Because Saddam's security organizations and Osama bin Laden's terrorist network operated with similar aims (at least in the short term), considerable overlap was inevitable when monitoring, contacting, financing, and training the same outside groups. This created both the appearance of and, in some way, a "de facto" link between the organizations. At times, these organizations would work together in pursuit of shared goals but still maintain their autonomy and independence because of innate caution and mutual distrust. Though the execution of Iraqi terror plots was not always successful, evidence shows that Saddam’s use of terrorist tactics and his support for terrorist groups remained strong up until the collapse of the regime.

UPDATE: Just to be clear, the confusion is not entirely the fault of the news organizations. The executive summary says that the evidence did not reveal a "smoking gun (direct connection)" between Iraq and al Qaeda. But, as noted, the report itself offers much evidence that the opposite is true.

A 17 year-old California youth had made it through Los Angeles County's foster care system and was ready to join the Marines. Only one thing stood in his way –liberal Los Angeles Superior Court Commissioner Marilyn Mackel and the fact that she “didn't approve of the Iraq war, didn't trust recruiters and didn't support the military.” Because the potential recruit was partly a ward of Los Angeles County, the commissioner's will carried the day:

Shawn Sage long dreamed of joining the military, and watching "Full Metal Jacket" last year really sold him on becoming a Marine. But last fall, a Los Angeles Superior Court commissioner dashed the foster teen's hopes of early enlistment for Marine sniper duty, plus a potential $10,000 signing bonus.

In denying the Royal High School student delayed entry into the Marine Corps, Children's Court Commissioner Marilyn Mackel reportedly told Sage and a recruiter that she didn't approve of the Iraq war, didn't trust recruiters and didn't support the military.

"The judge said she didn't support the Iraq war for any reason why we're over there," said Marine recruiter Sgt. Guillermo Medrano of the Simi Valley USMC recruiting office.

"She just said all recruiters were the same - that they 'all tap dance and tell me what I want to hear.' She said she didn't want him to fight in it… I care about Shawn (and) about every single person I put into the Marine Corps. I follow them. I take care of my kids. I treat them like my Marines.

"It just felt like, wow. I even told Shawn, I said, 'Dude, it feels like we've been burned at the stake at the Salem witch trial.' She just had some kind of animosity toward military personnel."

Animosity towards American military personnel from the left? I’m shocked! What with the left’s full–throated support of the Iraq War and the way it has trumpeted every bit of progress over there, this comes as a devastating surprise.

Exit question: Court Commissioner Marilyn Mackel – pariah of the American left, or heroine?

According to Capitol Hill Police, there's no link between the bombing of the recruiting center in Times Square, and the contemporaneous mailing to several Capitol Hill offices of pictures of the recruiting office with notes claiming 'we did it:'

Laura Eimiller, an FBI spokeswoman in Los Angeles, said an individual was questioned there about the letters to Congress and "there is no evidence linking the letters, which contained no threat, to the bombing."

A law enforcement official in Washington, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation of the bombing is continuing, called the timing of the letters an "incredibly unbelievable coincidence" and said no charges were expected in connection with them.

That's an understatement. There's only one way we can know for sure. Waterboard him!

Things can sure change quickly in Washington!

It seems just a few weeks ago that Democrats were again talking about attempting to force a withdrawal from Iraq. That was odd, since they had recently funded the war. It's even more surprising when you consider that the Democratic budget plan for 2009 matches President Bush's request for war funding, before even being confronted on the subject:

Here's what the Senate Democratic budget has to say on war funding:

The Chairman’s Mark matches the President’s core defense budget and the President’s request for additional war costs. While the war funding request in the President’s budget is insufficient for a full year’s costs under his policy of a long-term commitment in Iraq, the Chairman’s Mark’s war funding will cover expenses for about the first six months of the next administration, and longer still under the policies preferred by most Democrats in Congress.

The reference to 'longer still under the policies preferred by most Democrats' clearly signals that the money will last longer if it's spent on redeploying from Iraq. However, the fact remains that Democrats are planning to provide the funds, regardless.

It's stunning how completely and convincingly Congressional Democrats switch between bluster about forcing a withdrawal and full-funding for the mission. All it takes is a change in audience for leaders in Congress to change their tone.

Really:

Jamaleldine doesn't even crack a smile when he talks about how, in 1991, he joined in anti-American protests on Berlin's Kurfürstendamm boulevard during Operation Desert Storm. "That was the way it was back then," he says. He was 15 and "America was simply the enemy."

It took a full 14 years before Jamaleldine finally -- and radically -- changed his views on the Americans. It was on June 6, 2005, in the middle of the Iraq war, when he showed up at the US Army recruiting office in Little Rock, Arkansas, to enlist.

Jeff Jamaledine is a German citizen, born in Berlin to a German mother and a Gambian father. He now lives in Germany after having served two tours in Iraq and having been wounded twice. The second wound was nearly fatal--he was shot in the face at close range in a battle that claimed the lives of two Americans and at least 27 jihadists.

It's really one of the most remarkable stories I've read of action in Iraq. When Jamaledine was shot, there were no medevac helicopters in the area. There were Apaches. But the Apache is a two seater--no room for cargo, or wounded. When the call went out--by a soldier who was himself wounded--that Jamaledine needed to be evacuated immediately, one of the Apaches landed on the scene and had him strapped in. This meant the co-pilot had to "hang on outside" for the trip back to the base. Both of the crew were risking their jobs, but they got Jemaldine out. The Apache's crew then rejoined the battle, with the co-pilot sitting in a pool of blood for the rest of the night.

Spiegel quotes an argument between Jamaledine and his father over the war:

The father ends up saying: "I am in favor of peace." To which Jeff responds: "But someone has to achieve that peace." The father repeats: "I am in favor of peace."

That sounds an awful lot like the argument between the candidates in this year's election. When asked what his personal contribution to peace has been, Jamaledine responds, "killing terrorists." Will the American people find that answer more persuasive than the candidate who simply keeps repeating "I am in favor of peace"?

PS: Jamaledine became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 2006. Let's hope he comes home soon.

HT: Neptunus Lex

The Wall Street Journal reports that there's at least one major difference between Iraq and Vietnam -- a comparison Democrats are eager to draw. In the case of Vietnam, the views of Americans never changed course:

Pollsters first noticed an uptick in public perceptions of the war in the fall. But the change in February "struck me as, 'Wow,'" said Andrew Kohut, the Pew Research Center director....

The change in public attitudes comes at a time when it's increasingly likely that tens of thousands of U.S. troops will remain in Iraq for years to come, regardless of who is elected president. Advisers to the two Democrats say the candidates would begin withdrawing "combat" troops, but would keep significant numbers of "noncombat" troops in Iraq, and would largely abandon the counterinsurgency role that the U.S. currently is playing.

It's no accident that Democrats are again trying to adapt to the changed public attitude:

Congressional Democrats searching for a message that will resonate on the Iraq war are preparing an argument that getting troops out of the conflict is the only way to rebuild a spent military...

Or, as a staffer put it, “You can’t rebuild an engine while you’re driving along at 60 miles per hour.

As a friend comments, you may not be able to rebuild an engine while you're driving at 60 miles per hour, but if your main goal is keeping the engine clean and ready, you're never going to get anywhere.

Hat Tip: Instapundit

General Petraeus gets ready for next month's report to Congress:

The security trend lines all are favorable, the general said. “Attacks have continued to go down. We’ve had a five-month period consistently of a level of attacks we’ve not seen since spring of 2005,” he said. “This past week was the fourth-lowest since October 2004.”

Petraeus and U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan C. Crocker will explain why they believe attacks have come down when they report to President Bush and Congress.

The general said he is encouraged by the statistics and what he sees around the country. “In fact, the level of attacks has come down in recent weeks below a level we thought might be the ‘irreducible minimum,’” he said.

So far this month, not a single U.S. soldier has been killed in Iraq by hostile fire (one soldier was killed in a helicopter crash yesterday). Something tells me that come April, Hillary's not going to call Petraeus a liar as she did last fall.

That's the take from ABC News:

What, then, provoked one U.S. Marine to let himself be videotaped apparently flinging a yelping puppy over a cliff, bursting into laughter at the sound of the animal's body hitting the ground below? The tape of the apparent incident has rocketed around the Internet, provoking a firestorm of criticism.

The motivation for such an act, if it did indeed occur, may be as complex and deep as the U.S. war that has dragged on for more than four years, experts told ABCNEWS.com. Chief among them: Having to live with the constant fear of being injured or killed might have led this Marine to take his aggression out on a defenseless animal, several psychologists said.

I'm not convinced the tape is real, or more specifically that the puppy was alive. Either way, the tape is a disgrace and all involved ought to face serious consequences. But still...this is ridiculous. The Danger Room's Sharon Weinberger offered the best explanation:

I'd also hesitate to make a political point about how war dehumanizes people, which is of course true, but doesn't necessarily explain why someone would toss a puppy off a cliff. Teenagers across America have been doing sick stuff to puppies and kitties for years. Guess what: suburbia dehumanizes, too.

So, assuming the video isn't faked, the guy may have thrown the puppy off the cliff because war dehumanized him; he may have tossed a puppy off the cliff because suburbia dehumanized him; or maybe he and his buddy were just a couple of heartless idiots with a camera. Take your pick.

Which is to say--it's impossible to know what motivated these Marines to throw a puppy off a cliff, or if they did at all. And this wouldn't be the first story of U.S. soldiers killing dogs that turned out to be a publicity stunt.

Why is Iran going after al Qaeda’s enemies in Iraq? A few days ago, Iraqi spymaster Mohammed Abdullah Shahwani accused Iran of trying to sabotage al Qaeda’s opposition. "We have information confirming that Iranian secret services have sent agents to sabotage the Sahwa [i.e. the "Awakening"] experience in Iraq," Shahwani said shortly before Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s visit to Iraq. Shahwani "stressed the need for the Iraqi people to be vigilant in facing these activities."

The U.S. Military has apparently confirmed and added supporting details to Shahwani’s accusation. According to Adnkronos International (AKI), U.S. military spokesman Adm. Gregory Smith explained: "the American military recently obtained confessions from detainees who are members of the Al-Quds Brigade and other Shia group who have been arrested in various parts of Iraq, who said that they were assigned to carry out armed operations to kill the leaders and the members of the Awakening Councils, in order to destroy this experiment."

So, here we have yet another instance in which Iran’s interests coincide with al Qaeda’s. Upon reading these latest accusations I cannot help but think of all those who believe that Iran and America have common interests in Iraq. For example, in "Iran: Time for a New Approach," America’s foreign policy elite, including Zbigniew Brzezinski and the now current Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates, argued:

Although they may differ profoundly on specifics, both the United States and Iran want postconflict governments in Iraq and Afghanistan that respect the rights of their diverse citizenries and live in peace with their neighbors. The hostility that characterizes U.S.-Iranian relations undermines these shared interests and squanders the potential benefits of even limited cooperation. As tenuous new governments in Baghdad and Kabul embark on precarious post-conflict futures, the United States and the region cannot afford to spurn any prospective contributions to the region’s stability.

What "shared interests" do the United States and Iran have in post-Saddam Iraq? Beats me. As for the "specifics," we are against al Qaeda and Iran is not. That is indeed a profound difference.

At some point we are going to have to recognize that Iran and al Qaeda are allies, no?

The New York Sun's Eli Lake quotes surge architect Gen. Jack Keane:

"I have no doubts whatsoever that if she were president in January '09 she would not act irresponsibly and issue orders to conduct an immediate withdrawal from Iraq, regardless of the consequences, and squander the gains that have been made." Mr. Keane added that he could not imagine any president in the White House making that kind of decision.

But this accusation--that Clinton would act responsibly--is then angrily rejected by the Clinton campaign:

The senator's campaign yesterday differed with that assessment. "Senator Clinton speaks for herself on her plans to end the Iraq war," the campaign's communication director, Howard Wolfson, said. "She has said she will end the war the right way, swiftly and responsibly, and beginning within 60 days of taking office."

And they wonder how they got to this point.

While campaigning for Obama in Texas, John Kerry told the Washington Post that Iraq is "held together by chewing gum and Band-Aids." Wow. Does the senator really think that the blood, sweat, and sacrifice of American troops and the Iraqi people amount to nothing more than "chewing gum and Band-Aids"?

In this week's issue of THE WEEKLY STANDARD, Kim and Fred Kagan write about Lt. Gen. Ray Odierno, "the man who redefined the operational art of counterinsurgency." His achievement:

Lieutenant General Raymond Odierno took command of Multi-National Corps-Iraq (MNC-I) on December 14, 2006. Iraq was in fl ames. Insurgents and death squads were killing 3,000 civilians a month. Coalition forces were sustaining more than 1,200 attacks per week. Operation Together Forward II, the 2006 campaign to clear Baghdad’s most violent neighborhoods and hold them with Iraqi Security Forces, had been suspended because violence elsewhere in the capital was rising steeply. Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) owned safe havens within and around Baghdad, throughout Anbar, and in Diyala, Salah-ad-Din, and Ninewa provinces. The Iraqi government was completely paralyzed.

When General Odierno relinquished command of MNC-I on February 14, 2008, the civil war was over. Civilian casualties were down 60 percent, as were weekly attacks. AQI had been driven from its safe havens in and around Baghdad and throughout Anbar and Diyala and was attempting to reconstitute for a “last stand” in Mosul--with Coalition and Iraqi forces in pursuit. The Council of Representatives passed laws addressing de-Baathification, amnesty, provincial powers, and setting a date for provincial elections. The situation in Iraq had been utterly transformed.

How'd they do it? It's a great read, check it out here.

The news from Anbar Arianna.

American forces suffered 29 casualties in February, 25 of which were from hostile fire. This represents a drop of roughly 30 percent from the month prior. Good news, right? Wrong. Think Progress reports today:

Iraqi civilian casualties rose 36 percent in February.

“Violent civilian deaths in Iraq rose 36 percent in February from the previous month,” according to Iraqi government figures. The rise from 466 violent civilian deaths in January to 633 in February “was the first increase after six consecutive months of falling casualty tolls.” “February’s casualty figures spiked after female bombers killed 99 people at two pet markets in Baghdad on February 2 and a suicide bomber killed 63 people returning from a Shi’ite religious ritual south of Baghdad on February 24.”

It's strange how when American casualties are up, that's all we hear about, but now, suddenly, the left is overwhelmed with concern for the Iraqi people (what do they think will happen if American troops withdraw?). So what if American casualties have gone down and stayed down. So what if Iraqi civilian casualties have dropped for six straight months. They're up this month, and this is the worst possible spin one could put on the current situation, so that's what the left will report. It's instructive, however, to go back to that excellent piece in the Small Wars Journal last summer by David Kilcullen, COIN advisor to Gen. Petraeus:

Personally, I think we are doing reasonably well and casualties have been lower so far than I feared. Every single loss is a tragedy. But so far, thank God, the loss rate has not been too terrible: casualties are up in absolute terms, but down as a proportion of troops deployed (in the fourth quarter of 2006 we had about 100,000 troops in country and casualties averaged 90 deaths a month; now we have almost 160,000 troops in country but deaths are under 120 per month, much less than a proportionate increase, which would have been around 150 a month).

A proportional increase from last summer would have us at 150 dead a month. Instead we have 29. But you can see how Arianna spins it. If As-Sahab had a New York bureau, would it cover the news from Iraq any different than the Huffington Post?

A wonderful story:

After completing two tours in Iraq, Sgt. Wayne Leyde won $1 million from a scratch-and-win lotto ticket on Tuesday.

Now that he's won, Leyde, a 26-year-old member of the Washington National Guard, says he's still going to volunteer to go back to Iraq for a third tour and won't spend any of the money in the meantime.

Later in the story:

"I was on my way out when the lady said, 'Do you have a lucky scratch coin?'"

"I said 'no, you gave me a dime and nickel back.'"

"She said 'no, try this,"' handing Leyde a penny.

I hope Sgt. Leyde keeps that penny in his pocket during his next tour of duty, and returns home safely. And in the unlikely event Hollywood executives read that story, perhaps they should consider making it into a movie instead of the preachy and predictable drivel like Stop Loss that we've come to expect.

Angelina Jolie writes in today's Washington Post:

As for the question of whether the surge is working, I can only state what I witnessed: U.N. staff and those of non-governmental organizations seem to feel they have the right set of circumstances to attempt to scale up their programs. And when I asked the troops if they wanted to go home as soon as possible, they said that they miss home but feel invested in Iraq. They have lost many friends and want to be a part of the humanitarian progress they now feel is possible.

The article isn't really about the military situation, and she stipulates half-way through the piece that she is "not a security expert," but she's only saying what security experts have been saying for months now. If this analysis doesn't help her win an Academy Award, and it won't, it's an extremely effective piece of diplomacy. She pleads on behalf of the UNHCR "for $261 million this year to provide for refugees and internally displaced persons." Congress should give it to her.

She also asks each of the presidential candidates "to announce a comprehensive refugee plan with a specific timeline and budget as part of their Iraq strategy." McCain should be first in line to offer such a plan. The case for sustaining the U.S. presence there has always been based, in part, on the responsibility this country has to the people of Iraq. Let Obama explain how he's going to assure the safe return of refugees in tandem with a withdrawal of U.S. forces.

According to Military.com, the Iraqi army will be trading in its AK-47 for new M16A2 assault rifle. Says one U.S. official,

"We in the U.S. know that the M-16 is superior to the AK ... it's more durable," said Army Col. Stephen Scott, who's in charge of helping the Iraqi army get all the equipment it needs to outfit its forces. The Iraqis have embraced that ... and the fact that it is U.S. manufactured and supplied. They are very big on U.S.-produced [foreign military sales] materials."

This seemingly minor change could have significant long-term repercussions within Iraq. First, it will establish a common supply line with the U.S., so that we do not have to purchase the AK's 7.62 x 39mm ammunition from outside the U.S. logistic system. Moreover, because the M16 fires 5.56 x 45mm ammunition, it will not be so easy for Iraqi soldiers to sell their ammunition on the black market or smuggle it to al Qaeda and the insurgents. Gradually, the supply of AK-47 ammunition will begin to dry up (though this will take a long time, considering how much is lying around Iraq). Finally, because the M16's receiver is made as a sealed unit, it cannot be repaired easily in the field, but rather needs a skilled armorer with special tools. This would make the M16 of limited value to the insurgents, who do not have these resources. That the M16 looks and sounds very different from the AK-47 will also make it easier for U.S. and allied troops to distinguish between legitimate Iraqi troops and insurgents or impostors--not an insignificant factor on the urban battlefield.

There are some negatives. While the U.S. spokesman is right about the durability and accuracy of the M16 vs. the AK, the former is tolled to much finer tolerances than the latter, which means that it requires constant cleaning and care, especially in the dusty Iraqi environment. Unless cleaned regularly (and correctly), the M16 is prone to jamming (a problem it shares with the similar M4 Carbine). The AK, in contrast, was designed with very loose tolerances because it was meant to be used by poorly-trained conscripts. This makes it relatively inaccurate but very simple to maintain in the field, which is why it is beloved of guerrillas, terrorists, and many Third World armies. For the M16 to be a success with the Iraqi army, its troops are going to have learn habits of weapons care and maintenance on par with those of the U.S. Army--and it took a long time for us to learn to love the M16.

Ron Paul's presidential campaign exceeded expectations--at least in the fundraising department. Now he's using his cash and donor lists to elect other Republicans who back a withdrawal from Iraq:

Murray Sabrin, a New Jersey Senate candidate who has been endorsed by Paul, is expecting a “moneybomb” from his own backers and Paul’s this Friday. Sabrin has raised $194,260 since launching his campaign last month, according to a calculator on his Web site...

Republican Rep. Walter B. Jones , a fellow Iraq war critic who faces a tough primary challenge in North Carolina coastal 3rd District, has rented access to Paul’s list of donors in the state...

Paul’s presidential spokesman said the campaign is still in the process of figuring out how best to make full use of its massive list of campaign donors.

“A likely use would be to help candidates for office who are running on a constitutionalist platform,” Jesse Benton said. “It will go to a good use.”

I wrote about Walter Jones here. Sabrin, an underdog in the New Jersey Senate race, has called the Iraq war a 'fiasco,' and warns darkly that George Bush may do something to check Iran's nuclear ambitions.

When Texas Republicans decide on Tuesday whether they want Ron Paul representing them in Congress, they ought to consider how he will use the platform they give him.

Over at CSIS, Anthony Cordesman has published his latest report on violence in Iraq. His assessment of Anbar:

I covered yesterday the reluctance of Senate Democrats to begin debate on an Iraq withdrawal resolution. The irony of the situation is that the withdrawal bill is cosponsored by Majority Leader Harry Reid, who promised last year to bring it up. Democrats became even more angry when Senate Republicans voted to allow the Senate to debate the Feingold withdrawal bill. It led to a bizarre floor appearance by Democratic Whip Dick Durbin, complaining that Republicans -- by not shutting down the debate -- were forcing the Senate to waste valuable time. The Politico says:

Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) accused Republicans of “obstruction,” even though the GOP had just voted to allow debate instead of blocking the Iraq bill. Twenty Democrats voted against taking up the Iraq bill.

“The real reason is they’re scared to death of the housing bill,” Durbin said...

Right. The terrifying housing bill. It's unclear at this time whether Durbin was aware that it was the Democratic leadership which called up the bill and forced a debate.

The Politico also captures some fascinating statements from Democrats and Republicans about the debate, which will likely continue through Thursday, at least:

“Our view is that there’s been so much improvement in the situation in Iraq, ... we’re happy to talk about the improvements,” said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). “We welcome that debate...”

“The truth of the matter is, the surge completed the military effort, but the question is how do we get to a political settlement?” said Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. “That’s really where the debate should be...”

Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.) who has made several trips to Iraq and is considered one of the Democrats’ top voices on military strategy, said he admired Feingold’s efforts but believes a 120-day troop withdrawal mandate “is just too restrictive.”

And Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) admitted the Democrats were gaining no ground by debating a doomed Iraq troop withdrawal measure that was so similar to previously unsuccessful proposals...

So Republicans welcome the invitation of the Democratic leadership to debate improvements in Iraq, while Democrats cite a variety of reasons that the bill cosponsored by Reid and called up by him doesn't make much sense. Do you wonder why people give Congress such poor ratings?

From the latest USA Today/Gallup poll:

In a poll taken Thursday through Sunday, Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents say by 2-1 that Obama has the better chance of beating the Republican in November. Republicans agree: By more than 3-1, they say likely GOP nominee John McCain has a better chance of beating Clinton than Obama.

That's true even though Americans are split, 46%-46%, over whether Obama, a first-term senator, has the experience to be president. In contrast, Clinton is seen as having enough experience by 2-1, McCain by 3-1.

People like Obama's chances, but the poll has them in a dead heat among likely voters. That half the country thinks he doesn't "have the experience to be a good president" is surely one reason. And this came on the same day as the Washington Times reports worries within the military "about Mr. Obama's commander-in-chief qualifications." Lefties were outraged by this "fresh and newly-minted Obama smear," but the military has every reason to worry.

Last week Foreign Policy released a survey of "more than 3,400 active and retired officers at the highest levels of command." The officers were asked about the impact of the surge "on the ultimate achievement of the US military's goals in Iraq." Surely these officers understand securing peace and stability as among the military's ultimate goals, and 88 percent said the strategy had had a positive effect (44 percent very positive, 44 percent somewhat positive).

Obama disagrees, but on what basis? The Iraq war has come to define the military. That he should be so out of step with the institution's leadership on so central an issue is reason enough to doubt his judgment, informed as it is by so little experience and so few qualifications. And those doubts are clearly shared by the public at large.

More moderate Democrats are increasingly adjusting to the reality that the Iraq surge has been a military success, and that it is starting to create conditions for workable political compromise in Baghdad as well as Iraq’s provinces--see, for example, the air of desperation that has seized the hard-core anti-war crowd. Yet today’s Washington Post carries an op-ed by former Clinton chief of staff John Podesta clearly intended to intimidate Democratic candidates into sticking to their withdrawal pledges no matter what happens in Iraq. The article’s headline, "A War We Must End," is a hint of the pay-no-attention-to-the-facts nature of the argument.

And while Podesta has enlisted his Center for American Progress colleague Larry Korb and Ray Takeyh, an expert on the Middle East at the Council on Foreign Relations, it’s about as obvious as a hand grenade in a bowl of oatmeal--to quote the eminent philosopher Foghorn Leghorn--that the op-ed is little more than a political threat. "There is unease among the party’s base," the three write, that both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton might keep an open mind about the situation in Iraq, and that, should they be elected president, they might make a judgment based on the conditions of 2009 rather than 2006. They go on to say that the "concern" of "ardent activists" on the party’s left wing itself "demonstrates the necessity" of "ending a controversial war." That is, a Democratic president must put promises to MoveOn.org above the interests of the nation. This is a level of subtlety Tony Soprano might appreciate.

But there are aspects of the op-ed that are even more unsettling. To try to inoculate a Democratic president who sticks to the withdrawal-at-all-costs pledge from a stab-in-the back Republican "narrative," the Podesta Gang claims that Iraq will be lost--indeed, is already lost--in Baghdad, not Washington. Once again the left can only see Iraq as a replay of Vietnam: that "war was lost in Southeast Asia, not in the halls of Congress," they claim, but casting David Petraeus in the role of William Westmoreland will not work. And the attempt to do so only makes the stab-in-the-back narrative more credible, and threatens to exacerbate civil-military tensions.

No one can say with certainty what Iraq will look like a year from now; the fight there has indeed been a long, hard slog and even the most optimistic assessment would grant that there’s more slogging ahead. The next president may well come to the judgment that the gain is not worth the pain. But that would be a momentous decision based on something more than fear of "ardent activists" for whom an American defeat is an act of self-fulfillment.

The Senate is preparing to begin a debate on several Democratic proposals to force a withdrawal from Iraq, but in contrast to last year -- when Democrats were eager to vote on Iraq over and over -- there is little enthusiasm for a fight:

Democrats privately said Reid was not enthusiastic about resuming the debate on Iraq at this point — he had hoped to put that fight off until the supplemental spending measure comes up later this spring. But Reid, who has become increasingly outspoken against the war, agreed to allow the votes in part because GOP opposition would likely defeat them, limiting the amount of time the Senate would debate the issue...

Republican Senators are aiming to put Democrats in the uncomfortable position of having to cast votes on a measure that links war funding to a scaling down of operations in Iraq. The proposal mirrors similar legislation that failed last year.

As one Republican aide put it: “It’s not as great a vote for them as it once was.”...

“This provides us with an opportunity to talk about the political progress and military progress we’ve seen in Iraq and [allow for a] demonstration of the remarkable split within the Democrat Congress,” said a Republican leadership aide.

Just a year ago, Congressional Democrats couldn't schedule enough votes on Iraq. They wanted to take every opportunity they could to tie Republicans to the president's policy. Now suddenly, they're shying away from a debate that splits their conference. The reason, of course, is the success of the surge -- which has taken away the salience of Iraq as an issue. Voters don't want to see Congress waste its time on Iraq when there are many more pressing issues that need attention.

What does this mean for the general election? Well, if Democrats seek to make Iraq a central point of debate, they better be prepared for Republicans to use it against them. Voters are unlikely to reward politicians for wasting time on the past.

In Thusday night's debate, Barack Obama said:

You know, I've heard from an Army captain who was the head of a rifle platoon--supposed to have 39 men in a rifle platoon. Ended up being sent to Afghanistan with 24 because 15 of those soldiers had been sent to Iraq.

And as a consequence, they didn't have enough ammunition, they didn't have enough Humvees. They were actually capturing Taliban weapons, because it was easier to get Taliban weapons than it was for them to get properly equipped by our current commander in chief.

First ABC's Jake Tapper talked to the captain to verify his story. He found the captain credible and gave the all clear, despite the fact that the captain told him that there was no ammunition shortage in Afghanistan. NBC also spoke with the captain, but they weren't quite so quick to declare the case open and shut:

The captain told NBC News that he was talking about not having enough ammunition and no Humvees for training, but that his unit underwent a three-week crash course in Afghanistan before they saw combat.

The captain, who spoke on background because he's still active duty, said that his unit temporarily had to replace their .50-caliber turret-mounted machine gun with a weapon seized from the Taliban because they couldn't get a needed part fast enough.

Obama had claimed that U.S. forces didn't have ammunition for their fight against the Taliban as a consequence of the war in Iraq. There is no evidence that this is the case. Furthermore, U.S. troops weren't capturing Taliban weapons "because it was easier to get Taliban weapons than it was for them to get properly equipped by our current commander in chief." They had a broken gun and they temporarily replaced it with a weapon that had already been captured. Big difference. And you know what...if Obama had misremembered this story because he'd spoken with the captain so long ago, it might not be such a big deal. But Obama had never spoken with the captain. His staff had. And so Obama mangled the story.

As an aside, the only other person who's weighed in to support Obama's claims is Phillip Carter. Talking Points Memo, Andrew Sullivan, and others link to Carter as though he's some kind of authority on the subject. He may be, but he's also "doing some work for the Obama campaign," a fact that Obama's supporters in the blogosphere seem all too happy to ignore.

Update: Carter is on Obama's Veterans Policy Committee. Shouldn't TPM note that when the quote Carter as saying Obama's story is "eminently believable"?

Senator John Warner sent a letter to Barack Obama this afternoon regarding his comments during last night's debate alleging ammunition and other equipment shortages in Afghanistan. Warner refers to Obama's comments as "a disturbing framework of factual allegations."

According to Jake Tapper's report earlier today, the unnamed captain to whom Obama attributed the account was deployed to Afghanistan in the summer of 2003. Warner was, at the time, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. As such, he explains that he has "a responsibility to establish where in the military chain of command rests the 'accountability' [for the shortfalls], depending of course, on the accuracy of the facts."

Warner informs Obama that he is working with the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs to determine the facts of the incident described in last nights debate, and that he intends to raise the issues next Tuesday when Secretary of the Army Pete Green and General Casey appear before the committee.

Further, he asks Obama to provide the "essential facts of when- the dates- the unit was deployed, to which brigade combat team, or other unit it was assigned, the name and current location of the captain, or other military personnel who shared the alleged facts with you, so that the committee staff can debrief them."

This comes just hours after Reuters reported doubts within the Pentagon as to the veracity of Obama's account.

The Obama campaign put ABC reporter Jake Tapper in touch with the army captain Obama referred to in last night's debate. Go read Tapper's report of what the captain says. Unfortunately, his statements don’t justify the charges Obama made last night.

Once again, Obama said half the platoon had been "sent to Iraq,"

And as a consequence, they didn't have enough ammunition, they didn't have enough Humvees. They were actually capturing Taliban weapons, because it was easier to get Taliban weapons than it was for them to get properly equipped by our current commander in chief.

Nothing the captain said supports Obama's accusation that soldiers in Aghanistan faced a shortage of ammunition. Nothing the captain said supports the (ridiculous) claim that American soldiers were capturing Taliban weapons "because it was easier to get Taliban weapons" than American ones.

What the captain said was that it was sometimes difficult to get parts in theater, and on occasion his soldiers used captured weapons. If Obama were running to be quartermaster in chief, this story might have some relevance. But Obama hasn't unveiled his plan to streamline the Army's logistics in Afghanistan. And his basic narrative of the commander in chief neglecting equipment needs in Aghanistan isn’t supported by this one account. Moreover, does Obama think (a distortion of) one captain’s anecdote is an appropriate basis for making broad claims about military matters in a campaign to become commander in chief?

The captain's name is withheld in Tapper's piece, but we have submitted a request to the Obama campaign for an interview. More on Tapper's report at Hot Air and Ace.

During tonight's debate, Barack Obama related this stunning anecdote:

You know, I've heard from an Army captain who was the head of a rifle platoon--supposed to have 39 men in a rifle platoon. Ended up being sent to Afghanistan with 24 because 15 of those soldiers had been sent to Iraq.

And as a consequence, they didn't have enough ammunition, they didn't have enough Humvees. They were actually capturing Taliban weapons, because it was easier to get Taliban weapons than it was for them to get properly equipped by our current commander in chief.

As soon as the Senator made the claim he looked as though he knew he'd gone too far. The Corner reports the campaign is already backtracking. After the debate Obama advisor David Axlerod told Stephen Spruiell,

That was a discussion that a captain in the military had with our staff, and he asked that that be passed along to Senator Obama.

So Obama never actually spoke with the captain, which means he can reasonably claim the tale was garbled in transmission. It is possible that an American unit was ill-equipped for combat, these things happen in the fog of war (as do bullshit stories), and they have happened with troubling frequency in this war as in every other. Which is not to diminish any failure on the part of the administration or the military leadership in providing U.S. forces with the equipment they need. But is this particular story true?

Our troops never rotate into theater before running through a series of inspections which ensure that they're properly equipped, and we've never heard a report of soldiers having to scrounge for ammo. If we did, we'd join the Senator in raising hell. In Obama's telling the blame lies with President Bush, but the story is perfectly vague and based on nothing but hearsay. We expect there will be a lot of folks that want to get to the bottom of this, whether the facts supports Obama's version or not.

More from Hot Air and Ace.

On February 7, I noted that Muqtada al Sadr, the leader of the Mahdi Army, was likely to extend the cease-fire rather than be blamed for rolling back the security progress and exposing his militia to the full weight of Iraqi and U.S. forces. Today, Reuters reported Sadr will extend the six-month ceasefire by another six months. The cease-fire, which was due to expire on February 23, is widely credited with helping to reduce the violence in Iraq. Sadr imposed the cease-fire after the Mahdi Army clashed with Iraqi security forces in Najaf in August 2007

Sadr’s decision was strongly influenced by U.S. and Iraqi pressure from both the military and political spheres. As noted in the beginning of February, U.S. forces began to step up operations against the Sadr-linked and Iranian-backed Mahdi Army to pressure Sadr to extend the ceasefire. U.S. forces raided Sadr City several days later, and then proceeded, along with Iraqi troops, to relentlessly target Special Groups cells in central and southern Iraq. Multinational Forces Iraq even blamed the Special Groups for a blast in Sadr City and rocket attacks throughout Baghdad.

The standard press reporting has focused in on how Sadr’s negation of the truce would affect Iraqi security and U.S. politics. While there certainly is plenty of truth to this perspective, Sadr would also incur significant costs for a decision to end the cease-fire. The Iraqi security forces today are not the same as they were in 2007--they are far better equipped to deal with Sadr, and have been deployed to do so. The U.S. military still has its “surge” brigades in theater for several months. The government can declare Sadr’s political movement and the Mahdi Army illegal for taking up arms against the government. And the Shia, who have increasingly grown tired of the corrupt and criminal behavior of the Mahdi Army, may further pull back its support from Sadr.

For more background on Sadr's decision to extend the cease-fire, head to the Long War Journal.

Headline:

US: Bombers didn't have Down syndrome

Read further into the article and you learn:

"Both had recently received psychiatric treatment for depression and/or schizophrenia. From what we know now there's no indication that they had Down syndrome," Smith said, citing records obtained by the military.

Smith also said one of the women was married but that neither had criminal backgrounds. He said it was not clear how they were linked to al-Qaida in Iraq, which the military has said was behind the bombing.

The director of the Ibn-Rushd psychiatric teaching hospital in central Baghdad, Dr. Shalan al-Abboudi, said that one of the pet market bombers, a 36-year-old married woman, had been treated there for schizophrenia and depression, according to her file. Refusing to identify her, he said she received electric shock therapy and was released into the custody of an aunt.

There is a difference between using the mentally retarded as suicide bombers and using depressed, schizophrenic mental patients. But isn't the point that al Qaeda is unable to enlist jhadis bent on martyrdom to perform these missions, and instead must take advantage of those who are unable to reason properly?

Is the surge working and how long should American troops stay in Iraq? These are the questions Americans want answered. But according to Damien Cave, who spent most of the last year covering the war in Iraq as a reporter for the New York Times, they are not the only questions to ask. Home for a little more than a month now, he spoke Friday at an event in New York City hosted by the Phillips Foundation. Cave said that the question Americans must ask is "what do we owe the Iraqis as people?" And he pointed to what he called a "lack of intellectual rigor" on this issue from across American society.

Americans have a "moral responsibility to the Iraqi people," said Cave, though he did not elaborate on what would be required of us in order to fulfill our obligation. In particular he highlighted the sacrifices made by Iraqis who work for the American government and American companies, and the millions of innocent Iraqis forced to leave their homes by Iraq's violence. He expressed some frustration that politicians, think-tanks, and foundations had spent so little time addressing the question of what can or should be done for such people. He offered as an example the corruption that pervades Iraqi government and society, and he noted that there seemed to be little effort to develop a strategy for dealing with the problem, which he said severely undermines faith in the Iraqi government. Cave did not speculate on why American civil society had failed to maintain an interest in the challenge of rebuilding Iraq.

In fact, he offered far more questions than answers in what was a largely informal discussion on the nature of reporting from a war zone, but he spoke at length about "how psychologically damaged the Iraqi people are after decades under Saddam's rule." One of the legacies of that regime, he said, was that "no one trusts anyone." As to whether the surge is working, he allowed that violence was down across the country, but he explained that there are "no simple answers." He pointed to the combined effect of the ceasefire called by Moktada al-Sadr, the Awakening movement's war on al Qaeda, and the new strategy and increased numbers of U.S. forces. Whether it was the Iraqi or American dynamic that was more dominant is an open question, he said, but he did emphasize that from the American point of view, he believed the change in strategy--the move out from large bases and into Iraqi neighborhoods, as well as the increase in money set aside for new American allies--was more significant than the increase in force levels.

Again and again he pointed to the "complicated, nuanced reality" of Iraq. It is "more complicated than anyone realizes," he said. And he added that this complexity also extends to Iraqi public opinion. Cave was dubious of public opinion surveys showing that Iraqis want American troops out of Iraq. They "resent the American presence but still expect a lot from it," he said, and he recounted conversations with Iraqis in which they would say they wanted Americans to leave the country immediately, only to demand that before they withdraw they repair this or that element of the infrastructure--no matter how long it takes. For many Iraqis, he said, this isn't simply a question of "either or."

Regular readers will recall the dustup caused by the O'Hanlon/Pollack op-ed in the New York Times last July. Eager to cast doubt on the optimistic findings and views expressed by O'Hanlon and Pollack, many liberals pointed to the less-positive view expressed by Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, who had joined O'Hanlon and Pollack on their Iraq trip.

Cordesman has been to Iraq again, and his findings are worthy of attention:

No one can spend some 10 days visiting the battlefields in Iraq without seeing major progress in every area. A combination of the surge, improved win and hold tactics, the tribal uprising in Anbar and other provinces, the Sadr ceasefire, and major advances in the use of IS&R have transformed the battle against Al Qaida in Iraq. If the US provides sustained support to the Iraqi government -- in security, governance, and development -- there is now a very real chance that Iraq will emerge as a secure and stable state...

...and it is clear that Iraq can only succeed with years of additional US support in security, governance, and development. The progress in 2008 and 2009 cannot be decisive or irreversible. It will take strong US involvement throughout the life of the next Administration to succeed, and it may well take US aid through 2016.

One liberal blogger asked last August whether Cordesman's contrary views on Iraq would get the same attention as those of O'Hanlon and Pollack. An appropriate question today is whether liberal bloggers will give Cordesman's current assessment as much attention as they did his last.

Cover at the Corner Peter Wehner takes Mark Helprin to task for a piece in the Wall Street Journal that, while dealing mainly with the manifold sins of talk radio, also includes the following bit on the conduct of the Iraq war:

To begin with, American columns should have cut through Baghdad after three days and exited three weeks later, leaving Saddam dead and a pliant Iraqi strongman to keep the country harmless or suffer the same quick take-down. Rather than being broken on the wheel of irreconcilable Muslim factions, a supple and intact American power would have shattered Arab elation following Sept. 11, and then by threatening their rule been able to discipline the various police states of the region into eliminating their terrorists. Far more efficient that way, without six and more murderous and unavailing years in which neither a single democracy has appeared nor will one. The surge is merely coincident with a change in Sunni strategy. Instead of watching the U.S. and Iran arm the Shiites for a major sectarian war, the Sunni choose to avail themselves of American arms while simultaneously removing the lunatic jihadists nipping at their heels.

Wehner's critique of this statement deals mainly with the strategic ramifications of such a rapid withdrawal, such as the descent of Iraq into anarchy, the creation of a power vacuum to be filled by al Qaeda, the opportunity for Iran to extend its influence to the far side of the Persian Gulf, etc. All of which is true, but there is another and more general aspect to be considered.

As a military analyst, I see Helprin's prescription for Iraq as breathtaking in both its arrogance and its ignorance of military affairs. It is a striking example of the contrast between what Karl von Clausewitz called the difference between "war on paper" and "real war." Helprin breezily asserts that the U.S."should have cut through Baghdad after three days and exited three weeks later," which makes one wonder if he has ever looked at a map of Iraq and checked out the distances. Not even the Soviet Army, in its deepest Cold War fantasies, ever believed it could advance at such a rate--indeed, not even George Patton's legendary Third Army in World War II was able to do so. As for pulling out in three weeks, this statement merely confirms the old adage that "amateurs study tactics, professionals study logistics." If getting to Baghdad was a challenge, getting all our forces back from Baghdad, intact and with all of their supplies and equipment, would have been a prodigy of arms.

A professional looking at Mr. Helprin's plan would only shake his head in disbelief. Helprin seems to think that war is simply a matter of drawing up some plans on a map, handing the plans to the commanders, and telling them to go. It is never so easy, in part because the enemy might have something to say about one's plans, but also because of that pervasive phenomenon that Clausewitz called "friction." In On War (which almost as many claim to have read as claim to have read the Bible), Clausewitz writes, with people like Helprin in mind:

It's interesting to note that my mentor, Edward Luttwak, was an advisor to US Aircraft in the design and development of the A-67, which as John Noonan reported here yesterday is a likely pick for the Air Force's new COIN squadrons. Way back when, we did a study on close air support for the Air Force, and essentially concluded that fixed wing CAS was a waste of resources, because when you needed it badly, it was impossible to deliver (due to battlefield air defense systems), and when you could deliver it, you really didn't need it. Luttwak greatly preferred rotary wing solutions, based on the Israeli experience in the Yom Kippur War, as well as developments in short-range air defense systems in the 1980s.

Of course, that was in the context of the European Central Front, where NATO aircraft would have had to confront a very thick, layered, and overlapping Soviet air defense network. In COIN the situation is somewhat different, because air defenses tend to be simpler (mainly heavy machine guns and shoulder-fired missiles) and much thinner on the ground.

That said, to be effective--that is, to deliver ordnance on target in a timely and surgical manner that minimizes collateral damage--a manned aircraft must either be equipped with sophisticated target acquisition sensors (FLIR, LLTV and the like), use precision munitions directed by troops on the ground or a dedicated target acquisition aircraft (either manned or unmanned), or rely on unguided weapons and fly very low and slow. Since the A-67 lacks sophisticated sensors and is unlikely to be equipped with precision munitions, the latter is likely to be its normal mode of attack. But, flying low and slow, the plane will be extremely vulnerable, regardless of its small size, agility, and robust construction. Assuming the plane is capable of attacking forces equipped with typical insurgent air defense weapons, it will still likely sustain varying degrees of damage that will require time to repair and will impact its availability rate. On wonders how long Iraqi air force pilots will continue to press their luck, once the insurgents figure out the particular weaknesses of the Dragon.

That said, if it does manage to catch insurgents in the open, it should have a field day with them, given its typical load-out of GAU-2 7.62mm Minigun pods (each capable of spitting out 3,000 rounds per minute), 2.75-inch Hydra-70 rockets, and lightweight general purpose bombs. Its advertised endurance of eleven hours would allow it to provide extended coverage for Iraqi forces hunting down insurgents, but pilot endurance will be a real limiting factor (A-1 Skyraider pilots, who flew missions of similar duration in the Vietnam War, often employed inflatable rubber doughnuts to ease their aching posteriors). Also, the lack of any sort of hydraulic boost for the control system, while improving survivability against ground fire, will make the plane more work to fly, especially at higher speeds and payloads, which will also contribute to pilot fatigue.

Finally, without an integral or pod-mounted FLIR or night vision system, the Dragon will be relatively ineffective in darkness or bad weather. At best, its pilots could try to fly the plane using helmet-mounted night vision goggles (in the same manner as many helicopter pilots), but this is an extremely difficult skill to master, and given the higher speeds at which the Dragon will operate, I predict a fairly high accident rate on night operations--until the Iraqis become proficient. That, I suspect, is the reason for the all-aircraft ballistic parachute recovery system--in the event of a non-recoverable spin or departure from controlled flight, the pilot can pull the ripcord, bringing the aircraft back to a level flight position from which he can either wait for it to return to earth, or (after releasing the chute), resume normal flight. In most inexperienced air forces, far more aircraft are lost to accidents than to malfunctions or hostile action.

And that may be the main rationale for the A-67: a reasonable first step towards restoring the combat capability of the Iraqi Air Force. Cheap, simple to operate and repair, it's a good match for the skill set of current Iraqi pilots and ground crews. In addition, its modest performance represents no threat to U.S. forces (which must still be a consideration given examples of treachery and hostile action on the part of a handful of insurgent infiltrators in the Iraqi Army). Over time, the Iraqi Air Force can introduce more capable combat aircraft, or even UAVs, to perform the COIN mission, allowing the A-67 to segue into the dual roles of advanced trainer and second line light attack aircraft.

Democrats are having a harder and harder time arguing that the United States must withdraw from Iraq because of a failure to make progress toward benchmarks and reconciliation:

Iraq's parliament on Wednesday passed three key pieces of legislation that set a date for provincial elections, allot $48 billion for 2008 spending, and provide limited amnesty to detainees in Iraqi custody...

The draft law on provincial elections, which includes a detailed outline on devolving power to the provinces, initially had said voting would begin Oct. 1. Other details on that law and the amnesty were not immediately known.

The measures still must be approved by the three-member presidency council.

Regional elections are coming. Oil revenue is being shared among the provinces, despite bickering among rival factions that prevents the enactment of formal legislation. And Iraqi security forces are increasingly capable of assuming responsibility for their own defense -- though progress is not as fast as we might like.

All-in-all, the country is continuing to move toward the day when the United States is no longer needed to guarantee security and stability. We'll learn a lot more about this progress in April, when General Petraeus again reports to the Congress and the American people about the situation on the ground in Iraq.

HT: Ed Morrissey

Bloggers are all over the Berkeley City Council, which is now facing a serious backlash to its disgusting comments and policies toward the United States Marine Corps. Check out Michelle Malkin and Ace of Spades in particular. One Code Pink organizer who complains to the Los Angeles Times that "the right-wing groups are trying to make this into an issue of whether you are for or against the Marines. It's not about that." Excerpts from the debate among city council members over the Marine presence in the city would seem to indicate otherwise.

Lost amidst the debate, and the move by Harry Reid to shield Berkeley from Congressional action until they could retract their policy, is this fact: Berkeley isn't about to change anything:

While softening the language of the declaration, the new proposal does not retract three related items approved by the council, Wozniak said. One calls for residents to impede the work of any military recruiting station in the city. Another asks the city attorney to investigate whether the Marine Corps violates a city law banning discrimination based on sexual orientation. A third provides Code Pink with the parking place outside the recruitment center and issues the group a sound permit for its protests.

So in other words, the City Council retracts the inflammatory comments they approved about the Marine Corps, but they still intend to drive them out of the city. It would not change the city's policy of encouraging interference with Corps' recruitment; it would not affect the initiative to lump the recruitment office along with porn shops in city zoning regulations.

Ultimately not even Harry Reid can protect the People's Republic of Berkeley from itself, but Reid too will pay a price in the form of his falling approval ratings back in Nevada. And if the City Council doesn't dramatically revise the city policy when it meets tonight, Congressional Republicans will have all the ammunition they need to go after the city more aggressively.

A McCain adviser sends in this response to Obama's statement on 60 Minutes that timetables for withdrawal from Iraq would be dependent on his right, as commander in chief, "to assess the situation" on the ground:

Would this be the same Obama who has spent many months trying to strip away our current commander in chief’s flexibility on force levels by seeking (along with Clinton) a mandatory phased withdrawal of U.S. forces without regard the situation on the ground or the view of Gen. Petraeus?

It's all well and good to beat up Bush over Iraq, but when push comes to shove, Obama will face the same constraints, the same hard choices, that the current president faces. It seems the apparent indifference of the Democrats to the effects of a U.S. withdrawal depends entirely on who ends up being held responsible for those effects.

This is how al Qaeda in Iraq views its situation:

Al-Qaeda in Iraq faces an “extraordinary crisis”. Last year's mass defection of ordinary Sunnis from al-Qaeda to the US military “created panic, fear and the unwillingness to fight”. The terrorist group's security structure suffered “total collapse”.

These are the words not of al-Qaeda's enemies but of one of its own leaders in Anbar province — once the group's stronghold. They were set down last summer in a 39-page letter seized during a US raid on an al-Qaeda base near Samarra in November...

That second document is a bitter 16-page testament written last October by a local al-Qaeda leader near Balad, north of Baghdad. “I am Abu-Tariq, emir of the al-Layin and al-Mashahdah sector,” the author begins. He goes on to describe how his force of 600 shrank to fewer than 20.

“We were mistreated, cheated and betrayed by some of our brothers,” he says. “Those people were nothing but hypocrites, liars and traitors and were waiting for the right moment to switch sides with whoever pays them most.”

How does House Speaker Nancy Pelosi assess the situation on the ground?

Anchor Wolf Blitzer asked: “Are you not worried, though, that all the gains that have been achieved over the past year might be lost?”

“There haven't been gains, Wolf,” the speaker replied. “The gains have not produced the desired effect, which is the reconciliation of Iraq. This is a failure. This is a failure...

The Iraqi government is assuming a greater and greater share of the responsibility for internal security, over time. They have begun to share oil revenues among regions and ethnic groups. They have passed a de-baathification law. And they have begun to move toward holding regional elections.

It could not be more clear that there is progress toward reconciliation in Iraq, and that Pelosi is desperate to see the mission declared a failure before it has a chance to succeed. Politically, her stance would seem foolish. As attention shifts away from Iraq and toward domestic issues (which supposedly favor Democrats), Pelosi is inviting Americans to think about Iraq again, and to consider how the war is going. Republicans welcome that debate now more than ever.

It's also worth noting that the captured al Qaeda document was reportedly written last summer. Here's what Democrats were saying at the time about how things were going in Iraq:

• SEN. HARRY REID (D-NV) & REP. NANCY PELOSI (D-CA): “As Many Had Foreseen, The Escalation Has Failed To Produce The Intended Results. The Increase In U.S. Forces Has Had Little Impact In Curbing The Violence Or Fostering Political Reconciliation.” (Sen. Harry Reid And Rep. Nancy Pelosi, Letter To President George W. Bush, 06/13/07)

• REP. JACK MURTHA (D-PA): “I’m Absolutely Convinced That Right Now The Surge Isn’t Working.” “I've been hearing this month after month and I'm absolutely convinced that right now the surge isn't working and I'm convinced that if they don't pay attention to what I'm saying and a lot of other members of Congress are saying they're going to have a disaster on their hand because the American public wants the troops out of Iraq.” (ABC’s “This Week With George Stephanopoulos, 06/03/07)

• SEN. HARRY REID (D-NV): “The President’s Current Strategy Is Not Working And We Cannot Wait Until September To Act.” “Democrats and military experts and the American people know the president's current strategy is not working and we cannot wait until September to act.” (Sen. Reid, Press Conference, 07/09/07)

• SEN. TED KENNEDY (D-MA): “What Was The Surge Intended To Accomplish? The Surge Was Meant To Reduce Violence; It Has Not. To Permit Reconstruction; It Has Not. To Promote Reconciliation; It Has Not.” (Sen. Kennedy, Congressional Record, S.9307, 07/17/07)

The record is clear: Democrats have been as wrong as they could be (or worse: willfully ignorant) about the nation's central foreign policy and national security question. How can they be trusted going forward when they still deny the evidence?

MoveOn.org wants its supporters to know that when it comes to national security, John McCain backed the war in Iraq. Worse: he backed the surge! As the memo says:

Senator John McCain presents himself as a maverick and a critic of the Iraq war. But a close read of his record indicates that his position on the Iraq war has consistently matched President George W. Bush's.

Of course they have it exactly backward. McCain's position on the war hasn't matched Bush's, but Bush's positions have come to match McCain's. You'd think MoveOn would be content merely to point this out (isn't it worse, from their perspective, that McCain was out ahead of Bush on all this?). But to do so would implicitly link McCain to the current successes in Iraq. Can't have that...

So General Petraeus appears to be reaping the sweet rewards of his successful pacification efforts:

And when he's not quelling insurgencies or meeting with beautiful actresses? Petraeus hits the links.

The AP reports:

A top Democrat said Thursday he is preparing legislation that would give President Bush the war funding he wants this year, but on the condition that troops leave Iraq by the end of the year.

Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., chairman of the House defense appropriations subcommittee, said he'll propose that the House vote this March on the spending measure. In addition to the troop withdrawal, he said he'll ask for other conditions such as that all deploying troops must be fully trained and equipped.

Similar bills scraped by on party line votes in the House last year only to fail in the Senate, where Democrats hold a more narrow margin of control and 60 votes are needed to overcome procedural hurdles.

Murtha, speaking to reporters following a speech to the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said he's confident this bill would pass the House, but he's not sure about the Senate.

Murtha has tried this before--under much more favorable conditions--and failed every time. But a year ago he could claim to be acting in the interests of voters, who had delivered Congress to a Democratic party running against the war. Not anymore. A lot has changed since then, and it's not at all clear that Americans want the complete withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq. </