FDD

Numbers (CM)

Dean Barnett writes

[T]he mainstream media makes such a show of "supporting the troops" at every turn, you'd think it would rush to report the amazing story of our soldiers accomplishing what many observers declared "impossible" and "unwinnable" not so long ago.

It hasn't worked out that way. …

Some people are trying to explain to the American public what's happening in Iraq. Pete Hegseth is a 27 year-old Princeton grad who spent a year leading a combat platoon in Iraq and now heads Vets for Freedom, an organization that supports victory in Iraq. In yesterday's New York Post, Hegseth wrote an important op-ed piece that explains our counter-insurgency strategy in some depth.

"The term 'surge' is far too simplistic", Hegseth writes, "as it implies simply throwing more forces at the problem, when Petraeus' changes in tactics are even more important. The new counterinsurgency approach--namely, to take territory from al Qaeda, hold it, secure it and empower tribal sheiks to work together and rebuild their communities--finally provides an effective 'counteroffensive' to the chief tactics of al Qaeda militants and Shiite death squads."

And then there's the intrepid Michael Yon. Yon has spent more time on the frontlines than any other American reporters. He reported anecdotal evidence of a sea-change in Iraq that preceded the change in the hard numbers by several months.

The mainstream media's failure to report what's been happening in Iraq frustrates Yon perhaps more than anyone. He has risked his life to tell that story, and the American media has yawned ….

What's most frustrating about the press's reporting about Iraq is that you just know the next time something goes wrong, be it a car bomb slipping through or a mishap involving American soldiers, that story will get above-the-fold treatment in America's major dailies. The same old voices will begin shrieking "quagmire," and an American pop-singer will probably re-shape John Kerry's tired "Who will be the last to die for a mistake?" query into a lame rock song. (Wait, Bruce Springsteen has already done that.)

More here.

Quarterbacks in Iraq (CM)

Michael Yon writes from Baghdad:

American battalion commanders truly are operating like tribal leaders. I saw an American battalion commander, LTC  Patrick Frank, in a meeting yesterday with 19 local Iraqi leaders. Often the Iraqis would break down into  conversations among themselves, but each time the LTC Frank spoke, the room went silent. I have seen this repeated  over and over and over in different areas of Iraq. Our battalion commanders are operating in a capacity of local  leaders. They get serious respect. Even from enemies. (Perhaps especially from enemies, which clearly is part of  the reason so many people are coming to the table.) The battalion commanders are the quarterbacks who are pulling  this place together. Their words carry great clout.

More here.

A Hopeful Iraq? (CM)

Michael Yon reports from Iraq:

No thinking person would look at last year’s weather reports to judge whether it will rain today, yet we do something similar with Iraq news. The situation in Iraq has drastically changed, but the inertia of bad news leaves many convinced that the mission has failed beyond recovery, that all Iraqis are engaged in sectarian violence, or are waiting for us to leave so they can crush their neighbors. This view allows our soldiers two possible roles: either “victim caught in the crossfire” or “referee between warring parties.” Neither, rightly, is tolerable to the American or British public. ...

Anyone who has been in Iraq for longer than a few months, visited a handful of provinces, and spoken with a good number of Iraqis, likely would acknowledge that the reality here is complex and dynamic. But in the last six months it also has been increasingly hopeful, despite what the pessimistic dogma dome allows Americans and British to believe.

More here.

Drop in violence in Iraq (CM)

Reuters reports:

BAGHDAD, Oct 22 (Reuters) - Violence in Iraq has dropped by 70 percent since the end of June, when U.S. forces completed their build-up of 30,000 extra troops to stabilise the war-torn country, the Interior Ministry said on Monday. ...

In Baghdad, considered the epicentre of the violence because of its mix of Shi'ites and Sunni Arabs, car bombs had decreased by 67 percent and roadside bombs by 40 percent, he said. There had been a 28 percent drop in the number of bodies found dumped in the capital's streets.

In Anbar, a former insurgent hotbed where Sunni Arab tribes have joined U.S. forces against al Qaeda, there has been an 82 percent drop in violent deaths.

"These figures show a gradual improvement in controlling the security situation," Khalaf said.

But in the northern province of Nineveh, where many al Qaeda and other Sunni Arab militants fled to escape the crackdown in Baghdad and surrounding region, there had been a 129 percent rise in car bombings and a corresponding 114 percent increase in the number of people killed in violence.

Data from the health, interior and defence ministries in September showed a 50 percent drop in civilian deaths across the country from August, when 1,773 fatalities were recorded.

More here.

Neo-Churchillian (CM)

The Guardian reports:

Tony Blair has accused Iran of backing and financing terrorist attacks, and warned that the threat of militant Islam is similar to that posed by fascism in the early 20th century.

In his first major speech since leaving office, Mr Blair said that Iran was prepared to destabilise peaceful countries in support of the "deadly ideology" driving Muslim extremism. …

He said: "This ideology now has a state, Iran, that is prepared to back and finance terror in the pursuit of destabilising countries whose people wish to live in peace."  …

"There is a tendency even now, even in some of our own circles, to believe that they are as they are because we have provoked them and if we left them alone they would leave us alone," he said. "I fear this is mistaken. They have no intention of leaving us alone."

More here.

"What do we do when a juror refuses to vote?" (AM)

That, as the Dallas Morning News reports, was the note the judge in the Holy Land Foundation terrorism-funding trial in Texas received from the jury on October 3.  And that was over a week ago — the jury has now been deliberating for almost a month — since September 19.

This is an extraordinarily important case, focused on the Hamas support network in the United States, that the mainstream press has ignored.  There is obviously real reason for concern that it will end in a mistrial. 

The law is delicate in this area.  Jury deliberations are close to sacrosanct, and we generally are not permitted to inquire into them.  A juror is not disqualified for disagreeing with fellow jurors.  But the law recognizes a difference between a juror who disagrees, on the one hand, and a juror who refuses to deliberate.  The latter can be removed on the theory that he or she is refusing to perform the function of a juror.  It's not always easy, however, to distinguish disagreement with other jurors from refusal to discuss the case with other jurors — especially since the law does not permit us to inquire into the substance of the deliberations.  (We usually learn about those only after the trial, when jurors agree to be interviewed and explain what happened.)

It'll be terrible if this jury hangs since the trial has been long and complex.

Turnaround? (CM)

Military historian Victor Davis Hanson, just back from Iraq, writes:

[T]he news coverage of the sudden turnaround is lagging behind rapidly changing events on the ground, which, as in all wars, explode sometimes without warning and immediate full appreciation.

One thought in this context. It is of course true that the surge is working and our soldiers are far more sophisticated than in 2003. But in all the places one visits, there are reminders everywhere — pockmarked walls, rubble, memorial photos in bases — of all those killed during the worst ordeal between 2003-6. When one walks through these former battlefields, there is an eerie melancholy, a ghostly archaeology, a sense that now unnamed and largely anonymous Americans paid the ultimate price in those years to allow the opportunities we witness today. And that’s why we must continue and finish the job they started.

We at home really either chose not to follow the daily pulse of the battlefield, or our media finds it less lucrative or politically correct, or our leaders either don’t have the skill or the desire to get the American people engaged.

It’s a pity because we might well be witnessing an historic change in Iraq that would have profound effects throughout the region. The Iraqis are just beginning to step up effectively to their own defense, and are reaching out to the Americans-rather than solely vice versa as was mostly true between 2003-6. The result is that in a once frightening place like Ramadi — declared “beyond repair” in 9/06 in a sober and carefully written Marine intelligence report — Marine casualties have plummeted, reconstruction is underway, and everyone seems to be a bit dazed about the sudden calm after the horrific past storm — and whether it will continue.

More here.

Dispatch from Anbar (CM)

Michael Totten reports:

I walked among the tidy rows of grapes, figs, dates, and olives with Lieutenant Colonel Rahman and an Iraqi interpreter named Jack.

“Now that the fighting is over,” I said, “what kind of work do you focus on?”

“Mainly on gathering intelligence on sleeper cells and support networks,” the colonel said. “It is much easier now. People here are very appreciative and cooperative with what happened and with what is happening now. If Iraqi Police officers or coalition soldiers go to people's houses they are welcomed with open arms for food and for tea. Before the people here were not allowed to even look at coalition forces or they would be murdered by Al Qaeda.”

“What do you think about the possibility of Americans withdrawing their forces?” I said. He had already said please don't leave us to Captain Dennison, but I wanted at least a little elaboration.

“That is not in the best interests of Iraq right now,” he said. “We need some more time. If they pull out there will be a real possibility of serious sectarian warfare. Anbar is secure. Only Baghdad and the surrounding area remains to be secured. As soon as that happens, the fight will be over.” He is right to suggest that most of the violence is in the Baghdad area and its surroundings. But it’s still game-on in Mosul and in parts of Diyala Province. Southern Iraq suffers a lot less violence than the center, but Shia militias still control parts of it.

“Are you optimistic?” I said.

“Yes,” he said.

“Why?” I said.

“I’ll tell you why,” he said. “I could not even dream of seeing what has taken place here in Anbar. Couldn’t even dream of it. If in Anbar, why not in Baghdad?”

More here.

Blackwater (RWC)

The Sept. 16 failed ambush of a U.S. diplomatic convoy in Baghdad’s Mansour district that resulted in the death of some Iraqis has also resulted in a firestorm of politically inspired and one-sided attacks on one of the best of the world’s military contractors: Blackwater, a company run and staffed by former special operations warriors who have been so efficient and skilled, so reliable and professional and aggressive in their protection of American diplomats and contractors in Iraq that not one of those Americans has ever been kidnapped or killed.

US intelligence reports say that al-Qaeda in Iraq has targeted US diplomats and CIA officers for priority assassination because of their headline value.  Existing tensions between the State Department and the US military were exacerbated by last Sunday’s firefight.  Those tensions were fueled by the sometimes unreliable and deeply corrupt Iraqi Ministry of Interior (MOI), more about which later.  The US Department of Defense is now complaining that State doesn’t sufficiently “control” their personal security details (PSD’s), though DOD also employs Blackwater on dangerous missions.

The incident last Sunday began around noon when Blackwater’s PSD Team 4 was protecting a US diplomat at the Izdihar financial compound.  A bomb planted in a nearby vehicle exploded.  None of the Americans was injured and the diplomat was hustled away with help from Blackwater Tactical Support Team 22 (TST).  A second force of Blackwater operatives (TST 23) raced from the nearby Green Zone to assist and, according to a “sensitive” report filed by the State Department’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security that day, when they arrived nearby they came under fire from an “estimated 8-10 persons (who) fired from multiple nearby locations, with some aggressors dressed in civilian apparel and others in Iraqi Police uniforms .” (My emphasis. The Iraqi police, and their uniforms, are under control of the MOI.)

The State Department report goes on: “The team returned defensive fire and attempted to drive out of the initial ambush site; however the team’s command Bearcat vehicle was disabled during the attack and could not continue.”  Enemy gunfire was so furious that bullets striking the engine block of the armored vehicle caused it to fail.

In the immediate aftermath of the shooting, the Iraqi MOI demanded that Blackwater be booted from the country and froze their activities without any investigation, immobilizing CIA officers and diplomats within the Green Zone.  According to the journalist Richard Minter, writing on Pajamas Media, the CIA station was “all but motionless –as meetings with informants and the Iraqi government” were hastily cancelled. Blackwater also protects US reconstruction efforts across Iraq, the building of clinics, schools, etc., and so according to Minter these too were all but shut down.

Some Iraqi witnesses, a number of whom work for the Ministry of the Interior, told reporters that Blackwater began shooting civilians without provocation, a ludicrous scenario and one the Americans deny.  The Blackwater contractors and the U.S. diplomats are saying the same thing: that the Blackwater men reacted lawfully after being provoked by the bomb blast and then defended themselves from a coordinated attack by men, some wearing police uniforms, firing automatic weapons. After a few days of serious paralysis, Blackwater went back to work in Iraq but the drumbeat to make them leave the country continues,

The New York Times says Blackwater men fire their weapons more often than any other contractor in Iraq. (That bullet count includes warning shots).  It is true that the Blackwater operators are famously aggressive.  They were precisely trained for survival and they work daily in the most lethal areas of Iraq, protecting Americans the insurgents want to kill.

Nonetheless, critics on the Left in the US, some of them in Congress, have rushed to side of the Iraqi witnesses to condemn Blackwater, however contrived the Iraqi statements may appear. Some of them are calling for repeal of Coalition Provisional Authority Order 17, the decree that, they claim, puts foreign security contractors beyond the reach of Iraqi law.

But Order 17 only excuses contractors from Iraqi laws when the action in question is required to fulfill a contract. In other words, despite several news articles stating otherwise, crimes like rape, murder, and theft can be tried under Iraqi law.  Private security contractors like Blackwater are bound by a number of U.S. statutes, international treaties, federal acquisition laws, and defense and trade controls regulations (the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act, the War Crimes Act, the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act, the Anti-Torture Statute, and the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.)  If the military contractor is working for the US Department of Defense, as some Blackwater men are, they are subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice

Military contractors not in violation of any of the above are not bound by Iraqi law, nor are members of the US military. Iraq is still a mess and government corruption is as common as roadside bombs and starving dogs. Any decision to revoke Order 17 would effectively shut down private security companies, which is likely the real goal of many on the Left who have rushed this case to judgment, and another 50,000 or more US military troops would have to take their place.  Not good. Fact is, private security firms are essential to solving the long term problems of Iraq.

Congressman Henry Waxman, the liberal Democrat from Los Angeles, held hearings this week whose purpose was as political as it was investigatory. Waxman is chairman of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. Waxman and some of his fellow Democrats are blaming the State Department for failing to “restrain” Blackwater in Iraq, though the evidence is that Blackwater has actually policed itself in what is a very tou9gh, unpredictable business.  Blackwater has about 1,000 employees highly trained employees in Iraq there and the company has fired or dismissed more than 100 for various infractions or misbehaviors under the State Department contract.

Blackwater is a company that has become strikingly successful over the past few years.  That success is infuriating to the organized Left which loathes everything about the company that others have thought was cool: its cryptic, dangerous-sounding name, its private air force, its huge North Carolina training base, its bear paw logo.  (In Paris, shops sell women’s panties and bras with Blackwater and its logo on them).  Blackwater’s lantern-jawed, close-cropped, sky-diving, special Ops patriotic American image makes the extreme Left even crazier. 

The Nation magazine crowd has worked themselves into a spitting fit over Blackwater, demonizing it through a media campaign that started about a year ago with a young, weasely, left-wing polemicist in the lead.  First came repeated personal attacks on Blackwater’s “right-wing Christian” founder, a decent, and honest ex-Navy SEAL named Erik Prince.  Even NPR, on a story about Blackwater referred to its founder as "a Christian”.

The polemical assaults were launched on anti-American blogs and Marxist/socialist websites (Workers World, for example,) and dumb, pompous, left-wing radio shows like “Democracy Now” and by the proselytizing of liberals of the Huffington Post/ Jon Stewart variety, who had succumbed to McCarthyite Bushophobia some time ago.  The left has successfully moved its corporate objectification from the evil of Haliburton to the evil of Blackwater.

German Terrorists (RWC)

A trio of homegrown terrorists arrested recently in Germany had gotten bomb detonators made in Syria from Operatives in Pakistan, the German government is saying.

The detonating devices were smuggled into Germany, from Syria through Turkey.

The Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said the suspects had targeted Americans in Germany and were just a few days away from acting when they were arrested.

The men had been trained at a camp in Pakistan by a terrorist group from Uzbekistan.  Two of the men were native born Germans, converts to Islam.

Blood Libel (CM)

Natan Sharansky writes:

The al-Dura incident wasn't the only media report to inflame passions against Israel in recent years, but it was the one with the highest profile. Moreover,...the al-Dura incident is part of the insidious trend in which Western media outlets allow themselves to be manipulated by dishonest and politically motivated sources (recall the Jenin "massacre" that never was, or the doctored Reuters photos from Israel's war against Hezbollah in 2006) …

It is important to note that the al-Dura news report profoundly influenced Western public opinion. When I served in the Israeli government as minister of Diaspora Affairs from 2003 to 2005, I traveled frequently to North American college campuses. I heard first hand how Mohammed al-Dura had shaped the perceptions of young people just beginning to follow events in the Middle East. For many Jewish students, the incident was a stain of dishonor that called into question their support for Israel. For anti-Israel students, the story reaffirmed their sense of Zionism's innately "racist" nature and became a tool for recruiting campus peers to the cause. ...

It is possible, however, to deter slanderous news reporting -- and the violence that often accompanies it -- by setting a precedent for media accountability...

More here.

Iraqi Metrics (CM)

Michael O’Hanlon writes:

The bottom line, that must not be forgotten amid all the competing reports and confusion and politics, is that U.S. government databases show clear and significant reductions in Iraqi civilian fatalities over the course of 2007.

It is way, way too soon to talk of stability in Iraq, and the lack of political progress there makes our long-term prospects for even partial success modest at best. However, at least on the battlefields, we have clearly been headed in the right direction.

More here.

Also, according to USA Today, “American fatalities in Iraq in September appear to have reached the lowest levels in more than a year.”

More here.