You can see Iraq from here

The Washington Post’s Thomas Ricks correctly describes the two Iraq wars concurrently being fought;

There are two Iraq wars being waged, according to military officers on the ground and defense experts: the one fought in the streets of Baghdad, and the war as it is perceived in Washington.

Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, who took over as the top U.S. commander in Iraq in February, cited the disparity last week. “The Washington clock is moving more rapidly than the Baghdad clock,” he said in a television interview. “So we’re obviously trying to speed up the Baghdad clock a bit and to produce some progress on the ground that can, perhaps . . . put a little more time on the Washington clock.”

One result of this disparity is the emergence of radically different views of the impact of the new strategy, which has been referred to as a “surge” because it sends more troops into Iraq but which is more noteworthy for moving U.S. troops off large, isolated bases and into smaller outposts across the capital.

Initial reports indicate that his strategy is working well, in that al Qaida is being pushed into the smaller towns outside of Baghdad and exposing themselves to gunfire, as reported by the Washington Times (via AP);

North of the capital, in the increasingly dangerous Diyala provincial capital of Baqouba, police reported 21 more bodies dumped in the streets, victims of the intense sectarian warfare. All were shot execution-style and many had been tortured. At least 62 bodies have been found in or near Baqouba since Tuesday.
    A total of 58 persons were killed or found dead across Iraq yesterday in the eighth week of the U.S.-Iraqi security crackdown on the capital and surrounding cities and towns.
    Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, meanwhile, said government officials from Iraq’s neighbors, the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council and representatives of the Group of Eight industrialized nations would meet in Egypt early next month.

With the release of the 15 British sailors and marines last week, we can get back to the business of killing malevolent influences in Iraq, even though Jalal Sharafi, a supposed Iranian diplomat claims that he wasn’t treated as well as the British by the CIA;

At the time of his disappearance, Iran alleged Sharafi had been abducted by an Iraqi military unit commanded by American forces — a charge repeated by several Iraqi Shiite lawmakers. U.S. authorities denied any role in his disappearance.

I guess the CIA is disguised as Iraqis these days.

Speaking of Iran, nothing that the Iranian government does happens in a vacuum. I’m pretty sure that the Iranians kidnapped the British sailors and marines to disrupt their counter-smuggling operations for a few weeks. I expect more IED attacks with Iranian-manufactured shaped charges and perhaps some more sophisticated chlorine-gas dirty bombs to make an appearance in th next few weeks to make the “surge” appear ineffective and to electrify the Washington war on Iraq. I’m sure the Democrats will be eager to comply with the Iranians and ramp up the rhetoric when the time comes.

AP reports that al Sadr bravely calls for his militiamen to fight the US invaders – but AP neglects to mention that Mookie al-Sadr is making this call to arms from the bar at the Tehran Holiday Inn Express;

The powerful Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr ordered his militiamen on Sunday to redouble their battle to oust American forces and argued that Iraq’s army and police should join him in defeating “your archenemy.”

Yeah, powerful. He’s not even in the country and he doesn’t realize that most of his militia has been disarmed and rounded up. I guess he’s doing his best impression of Ray Nagin calling for New Orleans’ residents to be brave from his room at the Baton Rouge Ramada. But it does mean that Iran has made resupplies available for the Shi’ite militias. al-Sadr wouldn’t be making this call if he didn’t already know they had the means to attack – it wouldn’t make him look as “powerful” to AP if they weren’t. 

All this yapping on the news channels by retired US officers second-guessing the British hostages is just blather, as far as I’m concerned. Firstly, the US Code of Conduct leaves enough wiggle room for American prisoners of war to do just what the British did in their TV interviews. All this false bravado about resistance to an enemy is real easy coming from people who’ve never spent time in foreign incarceration with no light at the end of the tunnel. Having been in a similar situation in my younger days, I sympathize with them.

Yeah, they probably should have resisted capture. I would have – not because I’m brave, but because I’d rather get shot to death than beheaded – which seems to be popular in that part of the world. But, I’m glad neither were in store for these British warriors. I’d sure like to see them resist temptation of commercializing their ordeal, though.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the Iranians denied Maliki access to it’s airpace while he was flying to other Arab countries this weekend. Yet Ahmadinejad thinks he should be able to fly to New York whenever he wants. Real mature, fella.

Of course the New York Times think the most important thing happening in Iraq right now (by putting this story on the front page) is the confusion in Iraq over whether they should leave statues of Hussein standing or not. That’s probably a prett good indication that the troops are doing a good job killing Islamists if all the New York Times can write about is stupid statues.

But Iraq the Model has the real news on how well the “surge” is working.

Category: Media, Politics, Terror War