Iraq Roundup
July 9, 2008
An alert reader contacted me today asking if
this story she found in the Investors Business Daily is true. The article asks this question:
What would happen if the U.S. won a war but the media didn't tell the American public? Apparently, we have to rely on a British newspaper for the news that we've defeated the last remnants of al-Qaida in Iraq.
The answer? Decide for yourself.
Did you hear about the
1,215 soldiers who reenlisted in Baghdad on July 4? Soldier's don't like to reenlist when we're losing.
Have you heard we're
phasing out our role in running prisons in Iraq?
Did you know we're now able to pull troops from Iraq and
shift them to Afghanistan?
How about this: Some troops who were scheduled to deploy to Iraq had their mission canceled and
were told to stay home?
Arab nations are now
re-establishing ties with Iraq, as in, treating it like a real autonomous government?
Iraq's northern Kurdish region is now beginning to
think about tourism? Sign me up.
Is the war over? I think so. Does that mean all the killing is finished and everyone can come home? Not quite yet...this is the "mopping up" phase of the operation: going through the complicated process of writing ourselves out of the play.
In my last post I praised Michael Yon's book,
Moment of Truth in Iraq. The last page of the book puts it very, very well:
Maybe creating a powerful democracy in the middle east was a foolish reason to go to war. Maybe it was never the reason we went to war. But it is within our grasp now and nearly all the hardest work has been done...If we precipitously withdraw our troops, all of the tremendous progress we are seeing will be lost.
American combat soldiers don't want pity. They're ready to fight to the end; they just don't want it to be for naught. They have been fighting for two nations, one of which didn't seem to notice. The Iraqis noticed.
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