Recently I stumbled upon a
blog from a historian imbedded with a unit stationed in Iraq. He really doesn't consider himself a journalist as he views most of the journalists in Iraq with disdain for shoddy journalism. He goes on patrols with "Deuce Four" and is on the bleeding edge of the war on terror.
And here is what CNN and Fox News aren't telling us. We are winning and winning handily. The Iraqis want us to stay. They are helping us. We are training their police and military forces. Their forces are taking up more and more of the duties. The Iraqi citizens believe in their fledgling government. They give the US and Iraqi forces leads on terrorist cells daily. Thousands of construction projects are going on across Iraq, everything from schools to power plants.
Michael Yon says that it is violent but the progress is steady and consistent. CNN doesn't mention the failed road side attack which led to the uncovering of an enormous weapons cash, shutting down of a foreign fighter importation route, and removal of several resistance cells in Mosul. He said that the foreign fighters are having to be drugged or blackmailed to become suicide bombers and once caught are singing like birds to route out their co-conspirators.
Yesterday, I watched one of his videos he posted to his site. A group of jihadists fired twenty mortars at a US army base with counter battery radar (in english you launch a mortar at us we can reverse calculate the trajectory and nail you right back). The counter battery was told not to fire. Instead one of our unmanned arial drones already in the air was directed to the launch site and the troops scrambled. The jihadists hopped into their van and drove off to drop off the various fighters at their homes. The whole time unknown to them the American eye in the sky was watching. After following the van for 45 minutes the van was stopped in front of a local police station where Iraqi and American forces took down those in the van without injury to anyone. Simultaneously raids were conducted on the homes of those dropped off also without injury. A cell was shut down and many weapons captured. A few additional leads were also uncovered for future operations. Not bad for an hour's work.
This unit is also sending a small Iraqi girl with severe illness to doctors in New Mexico to treat her. Her life expectancy has gone from a months to years. A family in Iraq is very happy. A family here in Utah is gathering school supplies to be sent to a US unit in Iraq for distribution to the children there. Many other units and people across america are doing the same thing. Food, clothing, school supplies, medical supplies, medical manuals. The Iraqis are grateful. They are gradually losing their decades long fear of the west.
I'm not finding these stories on the front page of the New York Times. The media is out of touch. The cry for pullout is ever increasing but the troops who are actually laying their lives on the line WANT to stay until the job is done and done right. The people demanding pullout are the ones whose lives are NOT on the line. The media is doing more damage than the insurgents.
