The Opinionated Bastard

Interview with a Gitmo Interrogator Pretty interesting. Confirms some things, denys others.

Hat Tip: Matt Margolis

Right or left, you have to realize that the news coverage of the war in Iraq sucks.

A journalist on the scene explains why.

The title of this post is a very old military proverb.

During the election, Bush's opponents argued that Bush went into Iraq without a plan. This was untrue, Bush went into Iraq with the wrong plan. That is, the administration planned for a lot of things that never happened, and they didn't plan for the things that did happen.

You need not believe me of course, you can read the plan yourself here.

Hat Tip: Matt Margolis

As for it being the wrong plan, you can jump down Bush's throat if you like, but the real issue is that we have too many computers and not enough spies in the CIA. That is, we have the best SIGINT in the world, and the worst HUMINT.

I think we only have like 120 field agents or something in the whole world believe it or not. That's why the President has to watch CNN to find out what's going on.

So if you don't like what's happened in Iraq, be sure to write your congressmen asking him why the CIA doesn't have more spies.

In my frustration with the press coverage in Iraq, I read a certain amount of military blogs.

Now, so can you. Whether you support the war or not, its important to read what the soldiers who have been there are saying about it.

Hat Tip: Blackfive.

I've often said that Hussien was linked to terror, not Al Queda, and that's what pisses me off about the media when they confuse the many (Terrorism) with the one (Al Queda). There are some who feel that we should make the War on Terror a War on Al Queda, but that's just, well, dumb.

Here's a site with all the links: Hussien and Terror

Read Micheal Yon's Latest

Steven Vincent was killed in Iraq. Steven Vincent was a freelance journalist in Iraq, and wrote some great pieces. You can read his blog here. TigerHawk has a roundup.

I'm sorry though, this doesn't let the New York Times off the hook. Sitting in your hotel in Baghdad and rehashing press releases is not journalism.

To see what a real journalist in Iraq looks like, read Michael Yon.

Read This

Michael talks about “catch and release” terrorists.

While I sympathize with the commander, if we just killed them outright, he would be leading a death squad.

Technorati Tags: Iraq, Terrorism

  A milestone has been reached on the military front in Iraq. Basically, the fact that the Iraqi Military and Police can be used to hold territory has completely transformed the war in Iraq. The MSM won't notice this for another couple of months; they'll continue with the quagmire stories. But already, the effects of this transformation have shown up in the casualty reports coming out of Iraq. Despite some of the most intense activity in Iraq to-date by the US Military, the number of servicemen killed in Iraq in September has been way down.

As a consequence, we've been able to not just keep the terrorists off balance, we've been taking and holding territory, with impressive results. Bill Roggio has excellent coverage of the operations we've been conducting, I want to talk about the big picture. First, here's a chart showing U.S. deaths in Iraq for 2005 by the cause.

Technorati Tags: Iraq

Every time I read the latest dispatch from Michael Yon I have two feelings:

• Joy at finally getting real reporting from Iraq.
• Anger at the New York Times.

Anyways, this piece is only for eating...

Not everything I read about Iraq is positive, I just don't see the need to drum up the negative from the MSM. Negatives from reasonable Iraqi's are worth the read though.

Well, I've been saying for awhile that we're finally occupying Iraq with the aid of the Iraqis (though you can't really occupy your own country).

Well, Bill Roggio at the Fourth Rail, whose been Johnny on the Spot with his coverage of military actions has this great flash presentation that illustrates this. It's a bit slow, and long, but I call it the March of the Blue Squares because Bill used blue squares to represent where we are trying to hold territory as opposed to the red circles he uses for search and destroy missions.

Anyways, check it out.

From Security Watchtower:

On Monday, a letter to the United Nations from Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim al Jafaari requested that the U.S. led coalition be given a mandate for another year in Iraq. The current mandate is scheduled to expire at the end of this year, and extending it through 2006 will require a Security Council resolution some time in the next eight weeks. The Iraqi government is also pushing for a clause that would allow them to terminate the mandate at any point during 2006.

At 10,000 trained Iraqi Police/month, in 8 months we'll have met the original goal of 240,000 Iraqi Police in Iraq. That would be a good time for us to leave...

You know, I think the people who want a deadline for the US to leave Iraq are morons.

It's perfectly clear to me. Just look at this chart.

There you go, Aug 2006. Just in time for the mid-term elections!

In a word, Duh! What other date were you expecting?

What would the US do if it didn't have its political schedule to determine how we fight wars?

These are from the Pentagon's report to Congress, which you can download here

Here's an interesting bit from the end of the report, before I show you all the pretty graphs:

U.S. forces will withdraw from Iraq as their mission is successfully accomplished. As noted in the July report, criteria for withdrawing Coalition Forces from Iraq are conditions-based, not calendar-based. There is not a timeline or milestones that directly tie the drawdown of Coalition forces to increased numbers of capable Iraqi battalions. Drawdown will occur in a phased, gradual manner as Iraqi forces become capable of taking the lead within areas of Iraq and in concert with Iraqi progress in political and economic capabilities.

and

Transfers will be effected on an area-by-area basis and will occur only with the approval of the Iraqi Prime Minister, the U.S. Ambassador, and the Commanding General, Multi-National Force-Iraq.

So we may pull out of 90% of Iraq before we pull out of the last little bit.

Read the whole thing

Even the Washington Post has noticed

This is interesting because I was talking with Fester about this a couple of weeks back, and he was quoting some old articles saying it had gotten really bad. But two months is a long time in Iraq, especially lately.

Interesting piece at the Fourth Rail about how they are using sniper teams on insurgents as they deploy IEDs.

Also very interesting is the comments saying that a year ago, the soldiers weren't allowed to engage insurgents...

I don't know if this was big picture planning (wait until there were more Iraqi troops available), or the US trying to conduct a war with one hand tied behind our back, but I could see how the sniper teams would be very effective.

I wonder if this is the “big picture” reason for using just a few routes now? They're bait?

Report from a Soldier in Iraq

For those of you who don't know, Ground Truth is where I post items that directly talk about what is going on Iraq without the filter of the mainstream media. If you really want to know what's going on there, its the best way to find out, IMHO, by going directly to the source. Sometimes the pieces are negative, sometimes they are positive, sometimes they're just coverage by informed people like Bill Roggio

You can read past items here.

Here's his blog entry.

Here's an interesting quote:

A note on civilians. I didn’t see one civilian hurt or mistreated while I was with the Marines of the 2/1. For one, there aren’t many there. Huseybah, normally about 30,000 people, is almost abandoned. I made it halfway through the city, and found maybe 10 houses with families in them. Best estimate is that about 5,000 civilians remain.

Secondly, I never saw a Marine shoot first. They never fired a round unless fired upon, which is in keeping with their rules of engagement. Now, when they were fire upon, even if it was just some guy taking potshots, the entire company would open up. If they brought the tanks in, it was all over.

In a different post relating to his article on Fallujah, he gives it to a troll:

Now, as for me being a shameful excuse for a human being — and I’m talking to you, “Susan” — get over yourself. My story was hardly cheerleading and I’m sick and tired of people who think any coverage of the military is somehow being complicit with war crimes. The Marines I met committed no crimes, wanted to get home and realized they were doing an often pointless task, a feeling I tried to convey in my story. If my reporting doesn’t fit your preconceived notions of what’s happening, tough. I’m right and you’re not. Referencing Dahr Jamal, who came over here with an agenda to “document atrocities,” is not journalism — it’s activism. And if that’s what you want, go to another damn blog.

Want a chance to see what the Iraqis think? I found this discussion board. Interesting how much they sound like us, they have some of the same divisions about the war...

On this forum the Sports section has the most posts...

From Melvin Laird the Secretary of Defense during Nixon who oversaw our withdrawal from Vietnam. Read it here

According to him, it wasn't Vietnamization that was so bad, it was when Congress 2 years later refused to fund the foreign aid for Vietnam.

Which means...in 2 years be prepared to write your Congressman about how we need to renew aid to Iraq.

Sigh

But read the article, its great to get that sort of perspective.

Interview with the Marine Commander in Fallujah says Iraqi police could control it in 6 months.

And we just handed over the largest one so far.

Read the Whole Thing

Over here at Iraqi Vote

Short and sweet, its a list of each coalition and their plusses and minuses.

Seems confusing, I wonder if the Iraqis will end up “voting for the man and not the party”?

Technorati Tags: Iraq

I just added this site to my blogroll. It's a photographer in the thick of things in Iraq, and he's telling it how it is.

Technorati Tags: Iraq

So I was reading one of the Iraqi Blogs and came upon this post, linking to this article. The comment was:

Military autopsy reports provide indisputable proof that detainees are being tortured to death while in US military custody. Yet the US corporate media are covering it with the seriousness of a garage sale for the local Baptist Church.

Except I actually followed all the links over to the ACLU site here.

Out of these 44 supposed torture autopsies, 31 out of the 44 reports the cause of death is natural or an accident.

Some of the other deaths are caused by the fact that the person was actively fighting with the troops that captured them, then died later from those injuries.

Even some of the “homicides” happened during problems at the prison:

Iraqi male detainee in U.S custody was killed by a shotgun wound to the head. The shot was delivered by coalition force guards when a group of prisoners became unruly.

If you accept everything the American Left accepts as “truth” instead of “rhetoric” you're going to end up hating everything about America. Realize that the CounterPunch guy is trying to make a point, so recognize the point, but don't trust anything he says until you follow up.

I think the real point is that America actively investigates and autopsies these deaths instead of just dumping them in a mass grave. I think that speaks well of us. I'm sure that there have been problems with the US-run prisons. I see no reason why the US would get an exemption from the history of prisons in the world.

But don't get sucked into the hysteria of the screamers. That's one of the reasons I'm always looking for reports from Iraqis or Soldiers about Iraq, and why I have a whole section of my blog called Ground Truth.

So while this report is disturbing, I don't find the ACLU report that interesting. In fact, I'd take them more seriously if they weren't inflating the body count to 44 by including the deaths from natural causes.

The Black Iris of Jordan posts his list of 50 things he'd like to change in Jordanian society.

Here's a few:

• Do not speed in your car. Amman is small, you can get anywhere relativly quickley and an accident is not worth shaving off 2 minutes from your travel time
• Remain quiet in movie theaters and watch the damn movie
• Close your mouth when you’re eating

The more people are different, the more they are the same.

Donald Rumsfeld has an editorial in the Wall Street Journal about Iraq and the Media. It's a transcript of his speech for Monday at Johns Hopkins.

63% of people in the news media thought the enterprise would fail. So did 71% of people in the foreign affairs establishment and 71% in academic settings or think tanks. Interestingly, opinion leaders from the U.S. military are optimistic about Iraq by a margin of 64% to 32%. And so is the American public, by a margin of 56% to 37%.

Which view of Iraq is more accurate? The pessimistic view of so-called elites in our country--or the optimism expressed by millions of Iraqis and by the roughly 158,000 troops on the ground? But, most important is the question: why should Iraq's success or failure matter to the American people? I'd like to address these questions today.

Like everything the real Donald does, it's not rah-rah, but rather a fair assessment of the good and bad in Iraq. The Bad:

* Bursts of violence, including continued assassinations and attempts to intimidate Iraqi leaders and those supporting the legitimate Iraqi government.

* Continuing U.S. and Iraqi casualties.

* Iran and Syria continue to be notably unhelpful.

The Good:

* The political process is on schedule. Iraqis have a Constitution they wrote and voted for, and hundreds of candidates are politicking for the elections.

* There seem to be growing divisions among the enemies of the Iraqi people, particularly after the bombing of a wedding reception in Amman, Jordan.

* More of Iraq's neighbors now seem to believe this new democracy might succeed and are moving to get right with the Iraqi people by being more active in their support.

* A vital and engaged media is emerging, with some 100 newspapers, 72 radio stations, and 44 television stations.

* Sunnis are increasingly taking part in the political process, further isolating those who still oppose the legitimate Iraqi government.

Perhaps he reads the Opinionated Bastard, because he's trying to define the victory conditions:

To be responsible, one needs to stop defining success in Iraq as the absence of terrorist attacks. As Sen. Joe Lieberman recently suggested, a better measure of success might be that a vast majority of Iraqis--tens of millions--are on the side of the democratic government, while a comparatively small number are opposed. This gives the Iraqi people an enormous advantage over time.

Anyways, read the whole thing.

Technorati Tags: Iraq

Over at A Citizen of Mosul:

The convoy was coming toward the intersection with very laud warning horn, they usually come too fast expecting the police to open the street for them by blocking the movement in the other directions and keeping the way free for them. This poor policeman was either un aware of the convoy or he intentionally don't care,when they come to the intersection it wasn't completely free. And he deserve to be executed for his unforgivable sin.

Pajamas Media put me onto this poll of the Iraqis.

Here are some charts to explain the data a little more clearly:

Wow. 70.6% of the Iraqis say their life is good? Were things this good under Saddam? Guess not...

Life is better for most Iraqi's then it used to be under Saddam. Is this temporary?

Nope, 60% of Iraqis think things will be even better a year from now! (Inshallah means “god willing”, and is just me being funny, it really means “don't know” from the survey). Looks like the Iraqis are a victim of their own media though, while most of them are doing better, more of them think the the country isn't doing as well:

Though they are even more optimistic for the country as a whole a year from now:

The top 3 things Iraqis thought would be the best thing that could happen to Iraq would be:

1. Security
2. Peace and Stability

3. A better life

   The fourth choice was American forces leaving Iraq, but that was only 5.7% of the count (more people answered “not sure”). An Islamic government was .1% with only 2 people choosing that. Of the things people chose from their list, over 90% of them expected that “best thing” to happen would happen in the next year.

Iraqis think Democracy is best:

And they have high hopes for the elections:

There's lots of data in the survey, I just picked out the ones I thought needed graphs the most. Here's a fun one though:

In fact, overall, the Iraqis were pretty open-minded about women:

There was bad news in the survey as well, I just expect you can get that from the regular media. In a nutshell though, they think the coalition sucks, but they don't want us to leave quite yet.

Read the Whole Thing

Read the Whole Thing

Technorati Tags: Iraq, puppy

From a journalist no less

In place of the civil war that elements in our media declared, I saw full streets, open shops, traffic jams, donkey carts, Muslim holiday flags - and children everywhere, waving as our Humvees passed. Even the clouds of dust we stirred up didn't deter them. And the presence of children in the streets is the best possible indicator of a low threat level.

A few days ago, a wild claim that the Baghdad morgue held 1,300 bodies was treated as Gospel truth. Yet Iraqis exaggerate madly and often have partisan interests. Did any Western reporter go to that morgue and count the bodies - a rough count would have done it - before telling the world the news?

Read the whole thing.

Instapundit is right if we lose this war, I will blame the media. I started blogging because after I subscribed to the State Department email of the daily news briefing, and I compared it to what was broadcast, I realized:

The press aren't even good stenographers. Anything they say the administration said, may not even be true.

Looks like Mudville Gazette found the same thing.

Look, I understand how journalism works. I write for a local monthly paper. I realize that if every day the masthead said “Today, pretty much like Yesterday”, no one would shell out $0.50 for a paper.

But even the lefty art rag I write for interviewed a soldier who served in Iraq this month, and they got it right. Why can't the big guys?

Over at The Real Ugly American