Mesa
Super Freak
Oh, the mods are going to hate me. Sorry Dave, Shell, Darth Niel, Pix, and the rest, but thought this was worth publishing since the media doesn't seem to be covering it.
Before everyone thinks retreat is the answer, educate yourself...
the war in Iraq, whether you agree with it or not, is not lost. I wish we had never had entered that mess.... But, we were convinced to enter into that war to free an ensalved people under a rule of tyranny and dictactorship. AND EVERYONE AGREED, DEMOCARATS AND REUPLICANS. DO NOT FORGET THAT. It sucks we are still there, but this country and these people are finally able to realize what all of the United States hard efforts and sacrifices were for. Do Not abandon them, and do not abandon our military.
Please, just read/watch this before you vote. Before someone tells you this is just a brainwashed servicemen, this is how they feel. They are fighting for a purpose and belive in what they are fighting for. Listen to our own military, rather than what the media tells you how you should feel. I work with ex-military. They share the belief that we are doing good. Don't be mislead. Think/decide for yourself.
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https://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/news/iraq/2007/05/iraq-070518-afps02.htm
https://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23898460/
Before everyone thinks retreat is the answer, educate yourself...
the war in Iraq, whether you agree with it or not, is not lost. I wish we had never had entered that mess.... But, we were convinced to enter into that war to free an ensalved people under a rule of tyranny and dictactorship. AND EVERYONE AGREED, DEMOCARATS AND REUPLICANS. DO NOT FORGET THAT. It sucks we are still there, but this country and these people are finally able to realize what all of the United States hard efforts and sacrifices were for. Do Not abandon them, and do not abandon our military.
Please, just read/watch this before you vote. Before someone tells you this is just a brainwashed servicemen, this is how they feel. They are fighting for a purpose and belive in what they are fighting for. Listen to our own military, rather than what the media tells you how you should feel. I work with ex-military. They share the belief that we are doing good. Don't be mislead. Think/decide for yourself.
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https://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/news/iraq/2007/05/iraq-070518-afps02.htm
What a Difference …
A year makes. A report from Fallujah, Iraq.
A year ago Shura Chamal-Eit (Elizabeth Street) in downtown Fallujah was a lethal place for American troops attempting to tame the city, a center of lawlessness and defiance by insurgents. Terrorists from Al Qaeda in Iraq and other groups attacked Coalition troops on the street and around the city, killing some and injuring many. But as U.S. Marines here pass yet another Christmas fighting a war few expected to last this long, Fallujah is on the verge of becoming a success story and symbol of a new, cooperative paradigm for winning Iraq.
Fed up with the wanton assassinations and summary executions by Al Qaeda in Iraq and alarmed that the group was strangling Fallujah's economy, city leaders and residents joined forces with the Marines to expel the group. Many Fallujah residents once offered help to insurgents or at best looked the other way when they fired rocket-propelled grenades, mortar and artillery at Marines and killed or maimed them with the dreaded improvised explosive devices (IEDs) that became commonplace. The same residents now identify insurgents to the Iraqi Army and Iraqi police force, who kill, capture or drive them from the city. Many of the terrorists have fled into the desert, often into Tharthar, an area also in Anbar province, north of Fallujah.
Marines who once passed their days trying to stay alive now work as virtual municipal employees, trying to restore and expand services like electricity, trash collection and water treatment. "I'm getting ready to go sit in on a political meeting at city hall," says Lt. Col. Christopher Dowling, commander of the 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines Regiment.
"The norm for Fallujah a year ago was that if I halted my patrol or vehicle for anything more than 10 minutes I would get hit with RPGs or small-arms fire or an IED within the next five minutes. I truly did not know if that would be the last patrol I went on," says Capt. Sean Miller, also of the 3rd Battalion. "What's normal for me now is I believe I can walk down the street without getting killed."
U.S. and Iraqi officials have divided the city, American-style, into nine precincts to better deliver services. Miller's precincts include Sina'e, a once-industrial area now littered with debris and twisted metal. He envisions investors coming back to the area once it is rebuilt. In Andaloos precinct, which includes Elizabeth Street and is also part of Miller's domain, Marine 2nd Lt. Chris Caldwell leads his men on foot patrols, walking around the old souk, or market, which he expects to be fully open in a matter of days. He says progress is such that he has to remind his men that "complacency kills."
Marine Sgt. Richard C. Laster just began his third Iraq tour—all of them in the Fallujah area. "I've seen it go through all these phases," he says. "Three days after I arrived [this time], the first thing I did was talk to civilians and ask how they were, what they thought about us. It was such a relief to know they were finally coming around."
Marine Commander Attributes Fallujah Success to Troop Surge
By Carmen L. Gleason
American Forces Press Service
WASHINGTON, May 18, 2007 – Higher troops levels are a major contributor to the success of operations in Iraq, especially in cities like Fallujah, a U.S. commander of troops in the western city said during a news conference today.
Building on the successes of the combat teams before his, Marine Col. Richard Simcock, commander of Regimental Combat Team 6, said the biggest advantage he has over his predecessors is the number of troops available to secure and stabilize the city.
“We can do more because we have more,” Simcock said. “Troop levels have allowed us to go places our predecessors couldn’t.”
He told reporters that his 6,000 troops have been able to break the “whack-a-mole” cycle of securing an area and then moving on only to have the enemy to come back in afterward.
“We can go into a particular area with a large force, establish security and set conditions for Iraqi security forces to come in behind us to transition into securing the area,” Simcock said.
He said his troops, with coalition and Iraqi forces, have successfully applied this strategy in four different cycles over the five months they have been deployed to the region.
Progress in Fallujah is “phenomenal,” he said, describing how although the 2004 Operation al-Fajr almost destroyed the city, with nearly all the residents being captured or killed, the city today has almost 4,000 residents.
“Fallujah today is an economically strong and flourishing city,” Simcock said. “We’re making great progress.”
He described the progress in Fallujah as having attained an iconic status for both coalition and enemy forces.
“It’s not perfect,” he said. “The enemy doesn’t want to give up, and within (the area of operations), Fallujah will be the last battle we’ll have to win.”
Terrorists continue to use murder and intimidation to try to hinder progress within the city’s government, he said. Within the last year, four of Fallujah’s 20 council members have been murdered, but the members were quickly replaced and the council has continued meeting.
The violence isn’t stopping forward progress, Simcock said. The people of Fallujah are seeing the benefits of what the government is doing.
“The terrorists fear the city government of Fallujah. They know the only way they can combat it is through murder and intimidation tactics,” he said. “I’m proud of the elected mayor and councilmen for not giving in to that tactic.”
Simcock said his confidence in the ability of the Iraqi government and forces continues to grow as both refuse to give up when facing enemy threats.
The colonel said coalition forces on either flank, in Baghdad in Ramadi, are having tremendous success, but he doesn’t fear the possibility of terrorists fleeing those cities and coming into nearby Fallujah.
“The people we’re facing will always go the way of least resistance, and they may be coming here,” Simcock said, “and I welcome them, because they are in for an unpleasant surprise.”
https://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23898460/
https://www.nypost.com/seven/05202008/postopinion/opedcolumnists/success_in_iraq__a_media_blackout_111606.htm
https://brain-terminal.com/posts/2008/06/02/washington-post-sees-success-in-iraq
THERE’S BEEN a relative lull in news coverage and debate about Iraq in recent weeks — which is odd, because May could turn out to have been one of the most important months of the war. While Washington’s attention has been fixed elsewhere, military analysts have watched with astonishment as the Iraqi government and army have gained control for the first time of the port city of Basra and the sprawling Baghdad neighborhood of Sadr City, routing the ^^^^^e militias that have ruled them for years and sending key militants scurrying to Iran. At the same time, Iraqi and U.S. forces have pushed forward with a long-promised offensive in Mosul, the last urban refuge of al-Qaeda. So many of its leaders have now been captured or killed that U.S. Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker, renowned for his cautious assessments, said that the terrorists have “never been closer to defeat than they are now.”
Iraq passed a turning point last fall when the U.S. counterinsurgency campaign launched in early 2007 produced a dramatic drop in violence and quelled the incipient sectarian war between Sunnis and ^^^^^es. Now, another tipping point may be near, one that sees the Iraqi government and army restoring order in almost all of the country, dispersing both rival militias and the Iranian-trained “special groups” that have used them as cover to wage war against Americans. It is — of course — too early to celebrate; though now in disarray, the Mahdi Army of Moqtada al-Sadr could still regroup, and Iran will almost certainly seek to stir up new violence before the U.S. and Iraqi elections this fall. Still, the rapidly improving conditions should allow U.S. commanders to make some welcome adjustments — and it ought to mandate an already-overdue rethinking by the “this-war-is-lost” caucus in Washington, including Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.).
https://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2006/06/14/signs_of_success_in_iraq/
Virtually from day one, the media have reported this war as a litany of gloom and doom. Images of violence and destruction dominate TV coverage. Analysts endlessly second-guess every military and political decision. Allegations of wrongdoing by US soldiers get far more play than tales of their heroism and generosity. No wonder more than half of the public now believes it was a mistake to send troops to Iraq.
Some of this defeatism was inevitable, given the journalistic predisposition for bad news. (``If it bleeds, it leads.") And some of it was a function of the newsroom's left-wing bias -- many journalists oppose the war and revile the Bush administration, and their coverage often reflects that hostility.
But there have also been highly negative assessments of the war from observers who can't be accused of habitual nay saying or Bush-bashing. In a dispiriting piece that appeared on the day Zarqawi's death was announced, New York Times columnist David Brooks wrote that ``in Iraq at the moment . . . savagery seems to be triumphing over decency." There may be no way to win this war without becoming as monstrous and cruel as the terrorists, he suggested, which is why ``most Americans simply want to get away."
Another thoughtful commentator, The Washington Post's David Ignatius, had been even more despairing one day earlier: ``This is an Iraqi nightmare," he wrote, ``and America seems powerless to stop it."
But not everyone is so hopeless.
In the June issue of Commentary, veteran Middle East journalist Amir Taheri describes ``The Real Iraq" as a far more promising place than the horror show of conventional media wisdom. Arriving in the United States after his latest tour of Iraq, Taheri says, he was ``confronted with an image of Iraq that is unrecognizable" -- an image that ``grossly . . . distorts the realities of present-day Iraq."
What are those realities? Drawing on nearly 40 years of observing Iraq first-hand, Taheri points to several leading indicators that he has always found reliable in gauging the country's true condition.
He begins with refugees. In the past, one could always tell that life in Iraq was growing desperate by the long lines of Iraqis trying to escape over the Iranian and Turkish borders. There have been no such scenes since the toppling of Saddam Hussein in 2003. Instead of fleeing the ``nightmare" that Iraq has supposedly become, Iraqi refugees have been returning, more than 1.2 million of them as of last December.
A second indicator is the pilgrim traffic to the Shi'ite shrines in Karbala and Najaf. Those pilgrimages all but dried up after Saddam bloodily crushed a Shi'ite uprising in 1991, and they didn't resume until the arrival of the Americans in 2003. ``In 2005," writes Taheri, ``the holy sites received an estimated 12 million pilgrims, making them the most-visited spots in the entire Muslim world, ahead of both Mecca and Medina."
A third sign: the value of the Iraqi dinar. All but worthless during Saddam's final years, the dinar is today a safe and solid medium of exchange . Related indicators are small-business activity, which is booming, and Iraqi agriculture, which has experienced a revival so remarkable that Iraq now exports food to its neighbors for the first time since the 1950s.
Finally, says Taheri, there is the willingness of Iraqis to speak their minds. Iraqis are very verbal, and ``when they fall silent, life is incontrovertibly becoming hard for them." They aren't silent now. In addition to talk radio, Internet blogs, and lively debate everywhere, ``a vast network of independent media has emerged in Iraq, including over 100 privately owned newspapers and magazines and more than two dozen radio and television stations." Nowhere in the Arab world is freedom of expression more robust.
https://www.newsweek.com/id/81993
