Month: July 2007

Despite everything that you hear coming from the “Main Stream Media” and the treasonous Democrats, the surge is working in Iraq.

This is from an article in the New York Daily Post by Ralph Peters.

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To a military professional, the tactical progress made in Iraq over the last few months is impressive. To a member of Congress, it’s an annoyance.

The herd animals on Capitol Hill – from both parties – just can’t wait to go over the cliff on Iraq. And even when the media mention one or two of the successes achieved by our troops, the reports are grudging.

Yet what’s happening on the ground, right now, in Baghdad and in Iraq’s most-troubled provinces, contributes directly to your security. In the words of a senior officer known for his careful assessments, al Qaeda’s terrorists in Iraq are “on their back foot and we’re trying to knock them to their knees.”

Do our politicians really want to help al Qaeda regain its balance?

Gen. David Petraeus and his deputies sharply prioritized the threats we face in Iraq: Al Qaeda is No. 1, and Iran’s Shia proxies are No. 2. Our troops hunt them relentlessly. And we don’t face our enemies alone: Iraq’s security forces have begun to pick up their share of the fight.

A trusted source in Baghdad confirmed several key developments that’ve gone largely unreported. Here’s what’s been happening while “journalists” focused on John Edwards’ haircuts:

* Al Qaeda lost the support of Iraq’s Sunni Arabs. The fanatics over-reached: They murdered popular sheiks, kidnapped tribal women for forced marriages, tried to outlaw any form of joy and (perhaps most fatally, given Iraqi habits) banned smoking. In response, the Arab version of the Marlboro Man rose up and started cutting terrorist throats.

* Since the tribes who once were fighting against us turned on al Qaeda, our troops not only captured the senior Iraqi in the organization – which made brief headlines – but also killed the three al Turki brothers, major-league pinch-hitters al Qaeda sent into Iraq to save the game.

Oh, and it emerged that the Iraqi “head” of the terrorists was just a front – in the words of one Army officer, Omar al Baghdadi was “a Wizard of Oz-like creation designed to give an impression that al Qaeda has Iraqis in its senior ranks.”

* Al Qaeda has been pushed right across Anbar, from the once Wild West to the province’s eastern fringes. The terrorists are still dug in elsewhere, from the Diyala River Valley to a few Baghdad neighborhoods – but, to quote that senior officer again, “our forces have been taking out their leaders faster than they can find qualified replacements.”

Even the Democrats yearning to become president admit, when pressed, that al Qaeda’s a threat to America. So why didn’t even one of them praise the success of our troops during their last debate?

But let’s be fair: Congressional Republicans, terrified of losing their power and glory and precious perks, haven’t rushed to applaud our progress, either. They’ll give up Iraq, as long as they don’t have to give up earmarks.

* It isn’t only al Qaeda taking serious hits. After briefly showing the flag, Muqtada al-Sadr fled back to Iran again, trailed by his senior deputies. Mookie’s No. 2 even moved his family to Iran. Why? Though he’s been weak in the past, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is now green-lighting Iraqi operations against the Jaish al Mahdi, the Mookster’s “Mahdi Army.”

With its descent into criminality and terror, the Mahdi Army, too, has been losing support among Iraqis – in this case, among Shias.

And Iraq’s security forces increasingly carry the fight to the militia:

* The Iraqi Police Tactical Support Unit in Nasiriyah came under attack by Mahdi Army elements accustomed to intimidating their enemies. Supported by a brave (and tiny) U.S. advisory team, the police commandos fought them off. Instead of a walkover, the militia thugs hit a wall – and got hammered by airstrikes, for good measure. Then the Iraqi police counter-attacked. The Mahdi Army force begged for negotiations.

* In Mosul, Iraqi army and police units stuck to their guns through a series of tough combat engagements, with the result that massive arms caches were seized from the terrorists and insurgents. In Kirkuk, Iraqi police reacted promptly to last week’s gruesome car-bombing – in time to stop two other car bombs from reaching their intended targets.

* In Baghdad, the surge isn’t only about American successes – Iraqi security and intelligence forces conducted a series of hard-hitting operations against both al Qaeda and Iran-backed Special Group terrorists.

What were you, the American people, told about all this? Well, The New Republic published a pack of out-of-the-ballpark lies concocted by a scammer claiming to be a grunt in Baghdad. Our soldiers, he wrote, spent their time playing games with babies’ skulls, running over dogs for fun and mocking disfigured women in their mess hall.

Anyone who knows our troops or has visited Iraq could instantly spot the absurdities in this smear and the soldiers in the unit denied that any of it happened – but The New Republic (which refuses to produce its source) isn’t exactly staffed by military veterans.

The editors wanted to believe evil about our men and women in uniform, and ended up doing evil to our troops. (Those editors ought to be sentenced to spend August in Baghdad with the infantrymen they defamed, cleaning out military port-a-johns in the 130-degree heat.)

Is success suddenly guaranteed in Iraq? Of course not. The situation’s still a bloody mess. But it’s also more encouraging than it’s been since the summer of 2003, when the downward slide began.

Gen. Dave Petraeus and his subordinate commanders are by far the best team we’ve ever had in place in that wretched country. They’re doing damned near everything right – with austere resources, despite the surge. And they’re being abandoned by your elected leaders.

Maybe the next presidential primary debate should be held in Baghdad.

Ralph Peters’ book, “Wars Of Blood And Faith: The Conflicts That Will Shape the Twenty-First Century,” is in stores now.

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Are these the same Europeans that Americans are told that we need to listen to and gain their respect, since they know so much more than we do.

Here is a retreat into fantasy. This is what Patton would say if he were still alive. None of the pansy ass political correctness that we are bombarded with everyday.

In A Culture War of Words, Michael Reagan compares Global Warming to Marxist Snake Oil. But that is not the only thing that I liked about it. His analysis of the coarsening of our language is absolutely correct.

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If anybody doubts America is engaged in a culture war and losing it they need only to take a look at the series of concerts promoting Al Gore’s global warming hoax last weekend. They would have learned that the war is being waged in the sewers. As those who made the mistake of watching any of these concerts here or abroad discovered, the enemies of culture are unable to complete a sentence without using the “F” word at least once, along with liberal sprinklings of the “S” word.
And their foul-mouthed rhetoric was not the least of it: the audiences ate it up and the performers knew that when they spewed their obscene filth they were giving their decadent fans exactly what they wanted.

That fact has not escaped the people who run the nation’s TV networks; nowadays it’s hard to find a TV drama that does not seed the dialogue with “F” words. If you have watched hit series such as “Deadwood” you quickly learned that the “F” word was among the milder epithets. That series introduced terms never before heard outside of men’s locker rooms or prison cells.

I went to a lot of concerts years ago. I never heard Frank Sinatra or any other performer use a single obscenity during their performances. Moreover, if any of them had uttered anything as foul as the “F” word, they would have been driven off the stage.

If you think I’m making too big a thing about the incredible degradation of language, keep in mind it represents the decline in the level of civility since the culture warriors declared war on decency. The widespread use of the “F” word is a symptom of the disease.

The America in which I grew up had standards, and people’s public behavior was judged by how well they measured up to those standards. One was expected to toe the line when it came to the way they communicated with one another. We were expected to show our respect to our fellow Americans by avoiding offensive words. Once upon a time one was expected to be a gentlemen or lady, and those terms — now treated with scorn — described people who had the utmost of respect for those around them and showed it in their everyday behavior.

Those who deviated from the accepted standards were told to “keep a civil tongue in your mouth.”

That’s no longer true. Comedians vie with each other to use the most extreme obscenities and sexual innuendos. What was once called “street language” is now considered normal discourse. Things once considered sacred are now seen as commonplace. Sex is no longer an expression of love between a man and a woman – today it’s seen as recreation, like a game of golf, to be portrayed on stage and screen without restraint.

In any civilization that desires to survive, simple decency and courtesy are crucial elements. In a society headed for the sewer, anything goes. And when anything goes — when the most extreme forms of language and behavior come to be seen as normal — civilization is transformed into barbarism.

That’s what’s at stake in the culture wars. A society bereft of standards that demand civilized behavior among its people is a society where the individual is deemed worthless as being anything but a consumer for the degraded wares of the smut peddlers and a source of income to pay for the schemes of those who sell Marxist snake oil such as global warming as a means of subjugating the populace.

And the more addicted to slime that populace becomes, the easier it is to subjugate them.

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