THINGS ABOUT THE WAR YOU WON'T SEE IN THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA

We are all hit with a barrage of "news" from Iraq.  Isn't it interesting, though, that we never hear about the good things that are happening there.  To find the positive accounts, one has to dig.  Finding the negative? No problem.  I think we have this backwards, but this isn't surprising from the mainstream media.  I am including a few of the positive things that have and are taking place there.  Here are some excerpts from the diary of a soldier stationed in Iraq, Captain Dan Sukman:

"August 14, 2006 - One major accomplishment is the turning over of the city of Mahamadiyah to the Iraqi forces there. Nearly 10 months ago, the police force was practically non-existent, and the Iraqi army presence was negligible. Today, we had another ceremony where we gave the security responsibility of Mahamadiyah to the Iraqi army. If I had told you 10 months ago the Iraqi army would be ready to take control of the city, I'd have been locked up in a padded room. This really reflects the hard work of our MiTTs [military transition teams] and battalion that have been working in Mahamadiyah over the past year.

July 15

 

A lot of people ask, "Where are the good news stories?" or "Where are the success stories?"

Here you go:

Our brigade took another step forward today. We turned over another portion of our AO [area of operation] to the Iraqi army in South Baghdad. It's a small step; it won't make national headlines, but it's steps like these that will eventually have us all on our way out of here.

Each time we turn over territory to the Iraqi army, it really represents the culmination of an enormous amount of hard work, both by our U.S. soldiers and the Iraqi soldiers.

As I discussed previously, this war is a marathon, not a sprint; fighting a counterinsurgency takes time; it measured in inches. We did not turn over the entire city of Baghdad to the Iraqi army, but we are a little closer today."

Well said.  You can read his entire diary on the Fox News website.  Here's more, this time from the Defend America website: "FORWARD OPERATING BASE SALERNO, Afghanistan, July 13, 2007 — Afghan engineers teamed up with the facilities engineer team here to complete a host of construction projects to include a “play ground,” a Mosque roof, and an ammunition holding area.

The Afghans have assisted in the many facets of the engineer processes. This included supervising the contracted equipment projects, as well as doing some small project design work.  Since the start of the program, our expectations are greatly increasing. They have a lot of knowledge. My civilian engineers were pleasantly surprised by their expertise,” said Army Lt. Col. Mark Jacobsen, facilities engineer team leader, from Gresham, Ore.  The Afghan engineers, from the Khowst Province and Paktia, are proud to be part of the Coalition team.  'We want to work for the Coalition forces,” said Abdullah, one of the Afghan engineers who graduated from Kabul University Engineering Facility. “The rebuilding of Afghanistan and the security situation are important to us and our country. We are building good relationships with the Coalition engineering teams.' "

Want to hear more?  This is from an article written by Austin Bay dated March 13, 2007 for Real Clear Politics: "The chattering class nostrum that Free Iraq and its coalition allies have "lost the Iraq war" is so blatantly wrong it would be a source of laughter were human life and hope-inspiring liberty not at such terrible risk. 

In January 2003, I argued that toppling Saddam's tyranny in Iraq would do two things: begin the process of fostering political choice (democracy) in the Middle East and bring al-Qaida onto a battlefield not of its choosing. Moreover, that battlefield would be largely manned by Muslim allies, exposing the great fractures within Islam and the Middle East that al-Qaida's strategists tried to mask by portraying America as "the enemy."

Credit the Iraqi people with taking the opportunity by conducting three honest, open, democratic elections. In May 2006, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki formed a democratically elected, consensus-seeking government not simply in Mesopotamia but in the heart of the politically dysfunctional Middle East.

That's an astonishing achievement.

Al-Qaida's now-deceased emir in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, understood the stakes. In a message to al-Qaida (intercepted by theCoalition in February 2004), Zarqawi wrote that after Iraqis run their own government, U.S. troops will remain, "but the sons of this land will be the authority. ... This is the democracy. We will have no pretexts." Iraq's new army and police will link with the people "by lineage, blood and appearance."

The terrorists and tyrants understand. It's a shame America's chatterers don't.

Unable to defeat coalition soldiers or dim liberty's appeal, Zarqawi and his terror clique chose Iraqi civilians as their target. They concluded that an Islamic sectarian war between Shia and Sunni was the only way al-Qaida would avoid defeat. That might entail temporarily placing a secular Saddam-type tyrant in power -- hence the short-term cooperation with thugs from the former regime. Al-Qaida and the Saddamists bet their bombs would break the Iraqi people. That has not happened. They know their resiliency is a stinging rebuke of terror and tyranny."

You can read these articles in their entirety on these websites.  With a little digging, and unfortunately you have to dig to get the good news about it, you can find much more that give a true picture of what has happened and what is happening.  One major benefit we have from taking THEIR game to THEIR playing field (which they REALLY did not want) is that we haven't been hit again on American soil.  Yes, we have acts of terrorism going on there, but that's the point.  It's THERE, not HERE.

I salute all of our men and women in the U. S. Armed Forces that have made this happen, and the extraordinary job they do everyday . . . for US.

 

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Tags: Iraq War, RealClearPolitics, Fox News, Defend America, U.S. Armed Forces