On this July Fourth weekend, I'd like to thank the brave US, Iraqi, and Coalition forces in Iraq for their perseverance, their expertise, and their largely unsung successes.

I will insert here the required disclaimer that the recent good news out of Iraq is "fragile and reversible". But I don't know how people can't be encouraged by this news.

From the Times of London:

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

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

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

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

. . .

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

Nouri al-Maliki, Iraq’s prime minister, who has also led a crackdown on the Shi’ite Mahdi Army in Basra and Baghdad in recent months, claimed yesterday that his government had “defeated” terrorism.

“They were intending to besiege Baghdad and control it,” Maliki said. “But thanks to the will of the tribes, security forces, army and all Iraqis, we defeated them.”

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

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

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

In addition, did you know that Saddam had 550 metric tons of yellowcake uranium and that this material has been safely sold to a Canadian company?

My guess is no.

I'm tired of the American Press and their "if it bleeds, it leads" mentality. I'm also tired of the tendency toward "no good news allowed when the President has an R after his name" mentality. But there are other bloggers who are far more skilled at commentary regarding this problem than I am.

Such as the Anchoress, who I hat-tip and wish a happy Fourth to. You should read her - she does excellent work.

From Michael Barone's latest article on National Review Online:

During the Democratic primary season, all the party’s candidates veered hardly a jot or tittle from the narrative that helped the Democrats sweep the November 2006 elections. Iraq is spiraling into civil war, we invaded unwisely and have botched things ever since, no good outcome is possible, and it is time to get out of there as fast as we can.

In January 2007, when George W. Bush ordered the surge strategy, which John McCain had advocated since the summer of 2003, Barack Obama informed us that the surge couldn’t work. The only thing to do was to get out as soon as possible.

That stance proved to be a good move toward winning the presidential nomination — but it was poor prophecy. It is beyond doubt now that the surge has been hugely successful, beyond even the hopes of its strongest advocates, like Frederick and Kimberly Kagan. Violence is down enormously, Anbar and Basra and Sadr City have been pacified, Prime Minister Maliki has led successful attempts to pacify Shiites as well as Sunnis, and the Iraqi parliament has passed almost all of the “benchmark” legislation demanded by the Democratic Congress — all of which Barack Obama seems to have barely noticed or noticed not at all. He has not visited Iraq since January 2006 and did not seek a meeting with Gen. David Petraeus when he was in Washington.

Without delving too deep into current politics, the fact that the party and candidate of "change" seem unable to change their proposed Iraq policy of precipitous withdrawal in the face of such heartening success really troubles me.

Thankfully, not everyone is ignoring the changing tide in Iraq.

That’s not true of all critics of the Bush administration and its military leaders. The editorial writers of the Washington Post have been paying close and careful attention. And even though they may be temperamentally more inclined to favor Obama’s candidacy over John McCain’s, they have not been unwilling to take Obama to task for his inattention to American success. Obama, the Post noted tartly on June 7, “has become unreasonably wedded to a year-old proposal to rapidly withdraw all U.S. combat forces from the country — a plan offered when he wrongly believed that the situation would only worsen as long as American troops remained.”

On June 18, a Post editorial made the same point again and noted that Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyard Zebari told Obama in a phone conversation that a precipitate withdrawal would embolden al-Qaeda and Iran. But Obama told Jake Tapper of ABC News that he said no such thing. Perhaps he’s still trying to avoid facing facts that undermine his narrative. Which might also explain why he said he was willing to meet Mahmoud Ahmadinejad without preconditions while he has not been able to find time to meet with Petraeus.

. . .

If George W. Bush was wrong about the surge from summer 2003 to January 2007, Barack Obama has been wrong about it from January 2007 to today. John McCain seems to have been right on it all along. When asked why he changed his position on an issue, John Maynard Keynes said: “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?” What say you, Sen. Obama?

From Blackfive, via National Review's Corner, a wonderful homecoming.



To our soldiers: Thank you so much for all you do, and we look forward to the day when you are all back home.

From a report published last year for Congress by the Congressional Research Service

Table 4. U.S. Active Duty Military Deaths, 1980 Through 2006
Part I, Total Military Personnel

Year Total Deaths
1980 2,392
1981 2,380
1982 2,319
1983 2, 465
1984 1,999
1985 2, 252
1986 1,984
1987 1.983
1988 1,819
1989 1,636
1990 1,507
1991 1,787
1992 1,293
1993 1,213
1994 1,075
1995 1,040
1996 974
1997 817
1998 827
1999 796
2000 758
2001 891
2002 999
2003 1,228
2004 1,874
2005 1,942
2006 1,858

Total Deaths under Reagan 1981-1988 - 19,593
Total Deaths under Bush I 1989-1992 - 6,223
Total Deaths under Clinton 1993-2000 - 7,500
Total Deaths under Bush II 2001-2006 - 8,792

Deaths due to Hostile Action – from Table 5
1980-82 0
1983 18
1984 1
1985 0
1986 2
1987 37
1988 0
1989 23
1990 0
1991 147
1992-95 0
1996 1
1997-2000 0
2001 3
2002 18
2003 344
2004 739
2005 739
2006 753

Comparison of Deaths in Modern American Conflicts – from Table 6
World War I 116,516
World War II 405,399
Korea 36,578
Vietnam 58,209
Gulf War 382
Afghanistan 352
Iraqi Freedom 3,091

I put the above numbers together myself from the original source. There is lot of fascinating statistics there and I would encourage you to go read it.

And let us never forget that each number represents a precious human life.

And I want to personally thank anyone reading this who has ever served, or who has had a family member who served. Words are not adequate to express my gratitude.

For being such a polarizing issue, it seems that we're not hearing nearly as much about Iraq as we used to. Correction: we're hearing generalities about Iraq -- Democratic candidates pledging to withdraw the troops eventually, President Bush pledging to stay the course (and withdraw the troops eventually) -- but less and less specifics.

David French wrote an article recently that reminded me of the way this war will be won, if it is indeed won. Excerpts from it are below:

Mansuriyat al Jabal, Iraq — JAG officers like me tend to be a bit nervous whenever we go “outside the wire,” and last Thursday’s kerosene-delivery mission to the small Diyala River Valley town of Mansuriyat al Jabal (or “MAJ”) was no exception. The 2d Squadron, 3d Armored Cavalry Regiment (Lieutenant Colonel Paul T. Calvert, commanding) was deep into the second week of “Operation Raider Harvest,” a complex operation designed to deny al-Qaeda one of its last safe havens. As the squadron cleared the local towns of al-Qaeda, we also brought much-needed supplies, including humanitarian assistance (rice, flour, etc.), medical care, and kerosene (vital for cooking and heating on cold northern Iraq winter nights).

. . .

Because we knew that the town was formerly dominated by al-Qaeda (before we arrived, al-Qaeda committed atrocities against the former town leaders, killing many and destroying their homes), and because a fuel truck full of highly flammable kerosene would make an excellent target, the lawyer wasn’t the only nervous soldier out there. “Doc” Allen, a medic who had seen just about everything, leaned over and said, “I’ll be surprised if nothing happens today.”

Thankfully, Doc Allen was surprised — thanks to the professionalism and vigilance of the young soldiers of Grim Troop, who pulled off an operation that combined firm crowd control and constant vigilance with a light and compassionate touch. The kerosene delivery — done under a warm sun and a cloudless sky — was quiet and routine.

. . .

We will win the war when “nothing happened today” is the common report, when “nothing” means no explosions, no beheadings, no snipers, no torture, and no kidnappings, when “nothing” means that kids went to school, mothers went to the market, and dads went to work.

The desperate quest for “nothing” is one of the many things that separates us from our enemies in Iraq. Regardless of where one stands on the essential morality or wisdom of the initial decision to invade and topple Saddam Hussein, it is difficult to argue with the fundamental justice of our case today. When one side wins when life attains its most normal rhythms of work, play, and school, and the other side wins when that life is disrupted by the most hideous violence imaginable, there is no real debate as to who is right and who is wrong.

The citizens of MAJ know what life under al-Qaeda is like, and they are now beginning to experience life in the new, free Iraq. As the Iraqi army completes work on an outpost in town so that the only permanent military presence is Iraqi, and as the men of the town start to work on clearing local canals, repairing bridges, and renovating schools, it looks like we have a fighting chance to make “nothing happened in MAJ today” the common report.

And that’s how this war will end, not with toppled statues, not with defeated armies surrendering en masse, and almost certainly without any victory parades. It will end with . . . nothing. And when the last Humvee rolls out, it will perhaps roll out without even a wave.

The people of Iraq will be too busy living their lives to pay much attention.

I'm praying for an increasing amount of "nothing happened today" in Iraq.

A new study says, "Truth was first US casualty in Iraq war."

WASHINGTON (AFP) - US President George W. Bush and his top officials ran roughshod over the truth in the run-up to the Iraq war lying a total of 935 times, a study released Wednesday found.

This headline has been on both the Yahoo home page and the MSN home page all day.

Study: Bush led U.S. to war on 'false pretenses'
Hundreds of false statements on WMDs, al-Qaida used to justify Iraq war

WASHINGTON - A study by two nonprofit journalism organizations found that President Bush and top administration officials issued hundreds of false statements about the national security threat from Iraq in the two years following the 2001 terrorist attacks.

The study concluded that the statements "were part of an orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanized public opinion and, in the process, led the nation to war under decidedly false pretenses."

Yahoo used AFP and MSN used AP. Boy, I'll bet the media is giddy over this one. "Finally we can prove it! Bush really is a liar."

A couple questions.
First, did anyone ever do a study like this on Bill Clinton?
Second, if someone turns out to be wrong, is that the same thing as lying?

I do not believe that he knowingly lied to the public. I believe that he thought there were WMD's there. And so to label one MAJOR incorrect conclusion as 935 lies is ridiculous. It's true, he kept saying it. So they seem to be counting each one as a lie.

What about you, do you believe he lied? And have you ever heard of a scientific study that counted lies before? Man, these guys should turn their "studies" to an election campaign. They'll be busy til the sun goes supernova. Anyone know when and where they might be able to find one? (An election campaign I mean, not a supernova.)

Do police officers get prosecuted if they shoot someone who points a toy gun at them, and they really believe it was a gun?

The US Military wants its enlistment bonus money back from soldiers who couldn't finish their term because of their war injuries.

The U.S. Military is demanding that thousands of wounded service personnel give back signing bonuses because they are unable to serve out their commitments.

To get people to sign up, the military gives enlistment bonuses up to $30,000 in some cases.

Now men and women who have lost arms, legs, eyesight, hearing and can no longer serve are being ordered to pay some of that money back.

HT: Volokh.

David Bernstein blogs on a lecture by Matthias Kuentzel, which details the curious entrance of anti-Semitism (in its current virulent form):

. . . while there was always anti-Jewish sentiment in the Muslim world, it also was based on the notion of Jews as an inferior group that Mohammed had defeated militarily. Anti-Semitic visions of powerful Jews being behind the world's problems, and plotting to control the world, found most prominently in the Hamas charter, entered the Muslim world via the Muslim Brotherhood, who in turn took those ideas from the Nazis, which spent significant effort and money propagating them in the Middle East. This all started well before the creation of the State of Israel, belying the notion that the Israel-Palestinian conflict caused modern Muslim anti-Semitism.

"The success of the [9/11] attacks, Sheik Omar concluded, showed that 'there is no defense system could stand in the way of the determination of a person who wants to become a Martyr.' His conception of a martyr, it should be noted, differs from the common Western idea, derived from Christianity. A Christian martyr is someone who is killed for his faith, without bringing his own death upon himself. The notion of a 'martyr' as someone who kills others viewed as enemies of the faith, and in the process gets himself killed, is a distinctly Islamic concept."

-- Robert Spencer, Islam Unveiled.

Here is something you don't read every day: The Realignment of Iraq - We're winning because the Iraqis want us to--Moqtada al-Sadr included. (by Bartle Bull in today's Opinion Journal). This article is the first I've seen to speak of victory in Iraq as something that's already happened. I hope this guy's right. [H/T - The Anchoress]

Read the rest of this entry . . .

Here's a very powerful (creepy, says Barlow Farms) Ron Paul video. I like Ron Paul a lot, and I have something of a lukewarm agreement with the message of the video, but this kind of thing shows why Ron Paul can't be president. His message-- which could potentially resonate with a lot of Americans-- is completely overwhelmed by the presentation, which seems to bubble up from a libertarian underworld where Noam Chomsky would be greeted with handshakes and grins, while every mainstream Republican would be beaten and berated.

Questions they should be asking the presidential candidates about terrorism and national security. My favorite:

Three criminals from Krypton, freed by a nuclear blast in outer space, have come to Earth with powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal man. Worse, Superman has disappeared. The criminals' leader, General Zod, orders you to kneel before him as a symbol of America's defeat. I'll start with you, Senator Brownback. If the act means saving millions of lives, and perhaps buying time until the Man of Steel returns, would you forsake your belief in Jesus Christ and bow before this evil alien?

HT: Bruce Schneier.

The Boneman reacts to the "Freedom Alliance" concert in San Diego:

When we were walking to our seats we noticed that there were huge silhouetted woman decals decorating the stage. We later learned this was part of the Montgomery-Gentry country music act. Fair enough, but imagine the jarring disconnect of this backdrop while Michael W. Smith sang Gospel music. I'm sorry, but it was too big to miss. Add to that a bunch of ass-kicking "my town" song / talk, and you have yourself one heck of an interesting experience! Go America! (?)

Now here is my quandry. Is this the face of main-stream conservativism in America now? Power, sex, country, and... Jesus? Let me say it again - POWER, SEX, COUNTRY, and JESUS. Just to be clear - I like Sean Hannity and Oliver North for the most part. I understand their deep frustration with the radical liberal agenda that is eroding our freedoms. However, I wonder if these guys realize how a concert like this "presents" to the watching world. Again, they've raised a million dollars for scholarships and I haven't. I get that. I'm just struggling with the ethos of this thing. If this is what conservativism is now, we're in big trouble.

Sad but true-- the liberals aren't the only syncretists in town, nor even the best practitioners of the art.

Let me just vent.

I saw on the local news site that another local soldier has died from a roadside bomb in Iraq. A young man from our church died the same way a few months ago. He was a really good kid. Son of a leader in the church. The kind of guy you would be proud to have your daughter marry.

I haven't looked at any statistics, but I have a gut reaction to this. Is it just me, or is this how 95% of our casualties occur? When will our tactics adjust?

I personally know guys who are over there working behind the scenes to try to dismantle the networks that are behind this stuff by cutting off their resources. I believe they can succeed over the long term. But as a matter of military tactics, I just don't get the fact that we are still leaving our troops vulnerable to this singular mortal threat.

It brings to mind an old definition of insanity-- doing the same thing over and over again, yet expecting different results.

Certainly there are huge distinctions to be made, but doesn't this seem a little bit like when we watch the old Revolutionary or Civil War movies and find ourselves mystified that guys keep lining up in front of hundreds of men with rifles?

This stuff has been going on for years now. When will we offer an effective counter?

George Packer has a fine article in The New Yorker: Knowing the Enemy: Can social scientists redefine the “war on terror”?

It covers too much terrain to summarize easily, but the general discussion is on efforts to apply insights from social science, psychology, counterinsurgency theory, and the Cold War to the global war on terrorism.

A few excerpts:

During the years that [David] Kilcullen worked on his dissertation, two events in Indonesia deeply affected his thinking. The first was the rise [of]. . . a more extreme Islamist movement called Jemaah Islamiya, which became a Southeast Asian affiliate of Al Qaeda. The second was East Timor’s successful struggle for independence from Indonesia . . .

“I saw extremely similar behavior and extremely similar problems in an Islamic insurgency in West Java and a Christian-separatist insurgency in East Timor,” he said. “After 9/11, when a lot of people were saying, ‘The problem is Islam,’ I was thinking, It’s something deeper than that. It’s about human social networks and the way that they operate.” In West Java, elements of the failed Darul Islam insurgency—a local separatist movement with mystical leanings—had resumed fighting as Jemaah Islamiya, whose outlook was Salafist and global. Kilcullen said, “What that told me about Jemaah Islamiya is that it’s not about theology.” He went on, “There are elements in human psychological and social makeup that drive what’s happening. The Islamic bit is secondary. This is human behavior in an Islamic setting. This is not ‘Islamic behavior.’ ”

Just before the 2004 American elections, Kilcullen was doing intelligence work for the Australian government, sifting through Osama bin Laden’s public statements, including transcripts of a video that offered a list of grievances against America: Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, global warming. The last item brought Kilcullen up short. “I thought, Hang on! What kind of jihadist are you?” he recalled. The odd inclusion of environmentalist rhetoric, he said, made clear that “this wasn’t a list of genuine grievances. This was an Al Qaeda information strategy.”

An information strategy seems to be driving the agenda of every radical Islamist movement. Kilcullen noted that when insurgents ambush an American convoy in Iraq, “they’re not doing that because they want to reduce the number of Humvees we have in Iraq by one. They’re doing it because they want spectacular media footage of a burning Humvee.”

World War I was a horrific catastrophe that changed the world forever. It was warfare on a scale never before imagined, combining new and terrifying technologies such as planes, tanks, and poison gas with misfit, outmoded tactics that guaranteed maximum casualties in a trench-hell of filth, shells, and death.

Yet on Christmas day, 1914, something wonderful, though short-lived, happened:

Although the popular memory of World War One is normally one of horrific casualties and 'wasted' life, the conflict does have tales of comradeship and peace. One of the most remarkable, and heavily mythologised, events concerns the 'Christmas Truce' of 1914, in which the soldiers of the Western Front laid down their arms on Christmas Day and met in No Man's Land, exchanging food and cigarettes, as well as playing football. The cessation of violence was entirely unofficial and there had been no prior discussion: troops acted spontaneously from goodwill, not orders. Not only did this truce actually happen, but the event was more widespread than commonly portrayed.

There are many accounts of the Christmas truce, the most famous of which concern the meeting of British and German forces; however, French and Belgium troops also took part. The unofficial nature of the truce meant that there was no one single cause or origin; some narratives tell of British troops hearing their German counterparts singing Christmas carols and joining in, while Frank Richards, a private in the Royal Welch Fusiliers, told of how both sides erected signs wishing the other a 'Merry Christmas'. From these small starts some men crossed the lines with their hands up, and troops from the opposing side went to meet them. By the time officers realised what was happening the initial meetings had been made, and most commanders either turned a blind eye or happily joined in.

The fraternisation lasted, in many areas, for the whole of Christmas day. Food and supplies were exchanged on a one to one basis, while in some areas men borrowed tools and equipment from the enemy, in order to quickly improve their own living conditions. Many games of football were played using whatever would suffice for a ball, while bodies that had become trapped within No Man's Land were buried.

Most modern retellings of the Truce finish with the soldiers returning to their trenches and then fighting again the next day, but in many areas the peace lasted much longer. Frank Richard's account explained how both sides refrained from shooting at each other the next day, until the British troops were relieved and they left the front line. In other areas the goodwill lasted for several weeks, bringing a halt to opportunistic sniping, before the bloody conflict once again resumed.

Lock Joel Hunter in a closet, because I'm talking about torture again.

Via Bruce Schneier, here's a link to an essay and related resources on the issue of torture.

Stephen Griffin takes on Richard Posner and the "ticking time bomb" (TTB) justification for torture:

Read the rest of this entry . . .

. . . or so the drug informants have told federal agents. We've all heard the stories about the threat of would-be Islamic terrorists being smuggled across the US-Mexico border. Here's some good news about an unlikely ally: the drug cartels. Seems they're not so keen on helping the terrorists after all.

It's a rare positive twist for drug cartels entrenched along the 2,000-mile southern border, but they may be an unofficial ally in the U.S. war on terrorism.

Informants have told federal agents that drug traffickers fear that if a terrorist is caught on the border it would bring massive amounts of law enforcement attention to the region and possibly shut down well-traveled drug smuggling routes, Alonzo Peña, agent in charge of the U.S. Immigration and Customs and Enforcement office in San Antonio said here Thursday.

"They don't want it because it hurts their business," Peña, who oversees criminal investigations of drug and immigrant smugglers in a South Texas region that includes the border from Del Rio to Brownsville, told about 70 people at an immigration forum at Texas A&M University-Kingsville.

This doesn't mean the threat we've been told about is illusory. All of the methods illegal aliens use to get across are still available to them. What it does appear to mean (assuming the veracity of the drug informants) is that at least one fear is unfounded. Getting across the border, for the average laborer-type illegal immigrant, is a deadly and difficult enterprise with a high risk of capture and return. Many are caught while trying to cross. Others die in the desert. Others are captured somewhere along the journey to the big city.

The drug cartels have established ways of getting around all of these problems. It would be a good thing if the terrorists didn't have access to the same high-speed, low risk trafficking route and methods used by the drug runners.

Comic book writer Frank Miller on 9/11 and his new embrace of patriotism:

Both of my parents were World War II veterans. FDR-era patriots. And I was exactly the age to rebel against them.

It all fit together rather neatly. I could never stomach the flower-child twaddle of the '60s crowd and I was ready to believe that our flag was just an old piece of cloth and that patriotism was just some quaint relic, best left behind us . . .

Then came that sunny September morning when airplanes crashed into towers a very few miles from my home and thousands of my neighbors were ruthlessly incinerated -- reduced to ash. Now, I draw and write comic books. One thing my job involves is making up bad guys. Imagining human villainy in all its forms. Now the real thing had shown up. The real thing murdered my neighbors. In my city. In my country. Breathing in that awful, chalky crap that filled up the lungs of every New Yorker, then coughing it right out, not knowing what I was coughing up.

For the first time in my life, I know how it feels to face an existential menace. They want us to die. All of a sudden I realize what my parents were talking about all those years.

Read the rest here.

Hezbollah committed war crimes, says Amnesty International.