Taqiyya From The Times

Today's papers contain some amazing examples of clueless reporting by the MSM. The article that has to take the cake is the NYT article "The Guidebook for Taking a Life." This is an article that purports to identify jihadi "rules of war" by talking to selected salafists. It is nothing but complete disinformation, painting a false picture of radical Islamists - or as they would call it, taqiyya. The Times authors suggest that there is some moral and ethical code animating the radical Islamists. The problem with this bit of pro-Islamist insanity is that, in articulating the rules, the authors completely ignore the endless contradictory real world examples:

Rule No. 1: You can kill bystanders without feeling a lot of guilt. . .

Is this supposed to suggest that the Islamists feel any sort of remorse over collateral damage - or that collateral damage is even a viable concept among the Salafists? The majority of terrorist attacks are clearly designed to kill as many bystanders as possible. The suggestion that the animals that make up al Qaeda and other related terrorist organizations feel guilt over the death of "bystanders" does not comport with reality. Has anyone ever heard a single bit of Salafi propoganda bemoaning the death of innocent bystanders? The question for the Salafists in regards to "bystanders" is not guilt, its targeting.

Rule No. 2: You can kill children, too, without needing to feel distress. . .

True the Salafists argue that the collateral death of children is okay because they will go to Allah without sin and immediately age to the point where they can enjoy their 72 virgins. But the reality goes far beyond that. It begs the far more important "rules" for these animals. What about the deliberate targeting of children for murder when they are, by definition, without sin? What about the use of children as cover to be deliberately sacrificed in attacks? What about the brain washing of children to themselves become suicide bombers? There are no moral or societal limits on these animals as regards children. To suggest otherwise is deny reality.

Islamic militants are hardly alone in seeking to rationalize innocent deaths, says John O. Voll, a professor of Islamic history at Georgetown University. “Whether you are talking about leftist radicals here in the 1960s, or the apologies for civilian collateral damage in Iraq that you get from the Pentagon, the argument is that if the action is just, the collateral damage is justifiable,” he says.

This is the single most offensive statement of this utterly disingenuous article. One, there are no innocents to the Islamic animals. Two, the Islamist animals target women, children, and "bystanders" for death. The term collateral damage is not a term used by Islamists. It is a term used by the U.S. military who routinely do all that they can not to kill civilians. To even suggest that there is any moral equivalence between the unintended killing of innocents by the U.S. military and the targeting of innocents by the Islamist animals is grossly distorted and absurd.

Rule No. 3: Sometimes, you can single out civilians for killing; bankers are an example.

Sometimes? Bankers? This is shear sophistry and dissimulation. The Salafists have so interpreted their religion that their are no civilians. Bin Laden justified the Twin Towers attack on the logic that all Americans, including the civilians in the Twin Towers, were tax payers and thus supporters of America's military. Omar Bakri, the spiritual guide to some of the perpatrators of 7-7, reasoned that the Koran allows the killing of non-Muslim civilians in retaliation for the killing of Muslim civilians. He then blamed the West - including the United States - for killing Muslim civilians starting with the Crusades, circa 1294. The bottom line, there is no moral prohibition on the deliberate murder of any civilian. And indeed, it would seem that the Salafists far prefer the soft targets that civilians present.

Rule No. 4: You cannot kill in the country where you reside unless you were born there. . .

From what planet did this one drop? The 9-11 hijackers were not born in the lower 48. Iraq, Afghanistan, Spain, Lebanon, Israel, and I do not know how many other countries have experienced terrorism in the very recent past, if not on a daily basis, at the hands of the foreign born jihadis. Is this the NYT trying to tell us that we do not have to be concerned with any of the foreign born Islamists in this country? Who wrote this obvious falsity? CAIR?

Rule No. 5: You can lie or hide your religion if you do this for jihad.

This one is well known. It should receive a lot more publicity however. I am aware of no other religion that explicitly condones lying in order to commit acts of murder and mayhem. That certainly should be a centerpiece of dealing with any Muslims or Muslim organizations that one has any reason to suspect may be tied to radical Islam, such as CAIR or the Muslim Brotherhood.

Rule No. 6. You may need to ask your parents for their consent [to conduct jihad].

On one hand, how many times do we hear reports of captured jihadis where the parents are reported saying they cannot believe that their son or daughter could possibly be involved in terrorism. On the other hand, it would seem that many families in the Mid-East are proud when their child engages in terrorism or blows himself up along with a bunch of "bystanders." I personally think that we should hold such families equally responsible for the terrorism committed by their child. But that's just me.


Read the entire article here. Were I a cynic, I would call this the norm for NYT reporting on issues relating to terrorism. But I am a realist. So I will still call this piece of taqiyya the norm for the NYT. I do not understand how anyone pays for the suicidal fiction this paper is peddaling.

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NYT Op-Ed Argues For The Surge & Staying In Iraq

A surprising op-ed in today's NYT from Peter W. Rodman, former assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs, and author William Shawcross who was a strident opponent of the Vietnam War:

Some opponents of the Iraq war are toying with the idea of American defeat. A number of them are simply predicting it, while others advocate measures that would make it more likely. Lending intellectual respectability to all this is an argument that takes a strange comfort from the outcome of the Vietnam War. The defeat of the American enterprise in Indochina, it is said, turned out not to be as bad as expected. The United States recovered, and no lasting price was paid.

We beg to differ. Many years ago, the two of us clashed sharply over the wisdom and morality of American policy in Indochina, especially in Cambodia. . . Today we agree equally strongly that the consequences of defeat in Iraq would be even more serious and lasting.

The 1975 Communist victory in Indochina led to horrors that engulfed the region. The victorious Khmer Rouge killed one to two million of their fellow Cambodians in a genocidal, ideological rampage. In Vietnam and Laos, cruel gulags and “re-education” camps enforced repression. Millions of people fled, mostly by boat, with thousands dying in the attempt.

The defeat had a lasting and significant strategic impact. Leonid Brezhnev trumpeted that the global “correlation of forces” had shifted in favor of “socialism,” and the Soviets went on a geopolitical offensive in the third world for a decade. Their invasion of Afghanistan was one result. Demoralized European leaders publicly lamented Soviet aggressiveness and American paralysis.

. . . Today, in Iraq, there should be no illusion that defeat would come at an acceptable price. George Orwell wrote that the quickest way of ending a war is to lose it. But anyone who thinks an American defeat in Iraq will bring a merciful end to this conflict is deluded. Defeat would produce an explosion of euphoria among all the forces of Islamist extremism, throwing the entire Middle East into even greater upheaval. The likely human and strategic costs are appalling to contemplate. Perhaps that is why so much of the current debate seeks to ignore these consequences.

As in Indochina more than 30 years ago, millions of Iraqis today see the United States helping them defeat their murderous opponents as the only hope for their country. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have committed themselves to working with us and with their democratically elected government to enable their country to rejoin the world as a peaceful, moderate state that is a partner to its neighbors instead of a threat. If we accept defeat, these Iraqis will be at terrible risk. Thousands upon thousands of them will flee, as so many Vietnamese did after 1975.

The new strategy of the coalition and the Iraqis, ably directed by Gen. David Petraeus, offers the best prospect of reversing the direction of events — provided that we show staying power. Osama bin Laden said, a few months after 9/11, that “when people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature they will like the strong horse.” The United States, in his mind, is the weak horse. American defeat in Iraq would embolden the extremists in the Muslim world, demoralize and perhaps destabilize many moderate friendly governments, and accelerate the radicalization of every conflict in the Middle East.

Our conduct in Iraq is a crucial test of our credibility, especially with regard to the looming threat from revolutionary Iran. Our Arab and Israeli friends view Iraq in that wider context. They worry about our domestic debate, which had such a devastating impact on the outcome of the Vietnam War, and they want reassurance.

When government officials argued that American credibility was at stake in Indochina, critics ridiculed the notion. But when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990, he and his colleagues invoked Vietnam as a reason not to take American warnings seriously. The United States cannot be strong against Iran — or anywhere — if we accept defeat in Iraq.

Read the entire article here. I am more then a little bit cynical about NYT reporting and editorializing on Iraq. I consider this op-ed little more then an attempt by the NYT to claim their incredibly one-sided treatment of Iraq reporting as actually balanced. Regardless, this op-ed is welcome nonetheless.

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Poison Pills, Iraq War Funding and the Factually Challenged NYT

If you want to know the likely Democratic strategies for Iraq, they usually get floated first in the opinion section of the New York Times. And what appears there today is a prescription for putting barely disguised poison pills into the supplemental appropriations bill.

This is now a race to defeat. General Petraeus has promised to brief our elected leaders in September (assuming Murtha and Pelosi can make that briefing) on the status of counter-insurgency operations in Iraq. It seems a reasonable bet, based on all that has occurred since February, that General Petraeus will be reporting significant progress.

This leaves the Democrats in a quandry. In what must be the craven low point of partisan politics, Harry Reid and Jack Murtha have already begun attacking the honesty of General Petraeus. But that will be nowhere near enough. The far left of the party is demanding an outright end to the war, irrespective of the President's veto. And given their stranglehold on Democratic politics today, they have touched off a bidding war among Democratic presidential candidates to see who can surrender the fastest - with Ms. Clinton submitting the latest bid.

There is of course no chance of such legislation passing into law, but it greatly complicates what Democrats in Congress will seek to put into the bill. The NYT tells us today that it will be benchmarks tied to penalties. There is nothing wrong with crafting reasonable benchmarks that are grounded in reality and take into account on-going hostilities. That is not what the Democrats have in mind. In articulating this strategy, the NYT attempts to deligitimize Maliki, falsely painting him as inept and partisan, unable and unwilling to do what is necessary to govern Iraq:

Whether out of blind loyalty or blind denial, most Congressional Republicans are prepared to back up President Bush’s veto of the Iraq spending bill. It is now essential that the revised version not back away from demanding that Iraq’s prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, finally deliver on the crucial national reconciliation measures he has spent the last year dodging.

In the last year, Prime Minister Maliki has broken ranks with the Sadrists, overseen the adoption of a major security effort targeting al Qaeda, ex-Baathists and Shia militants, he has submitted an oil sharing law that is now with Parliament, he has drafted a law to restart pensions for retired Baathists, he has proposed a de-Baathification law that is now in the cabinet, and he has travelled to Anbar province to meet with Sunni leaders. Does that sound like dodging? Ah, but one cannot expect the NYT to evince intellectual honesty. Broad slanders are more their style.

What Mr. Maliki needs to do to slow Iraq’s bloodletting is no mystery. Iraq’s security forces must stop siding with the Shiite militias.

Today, U.S. and Iraqi forces are permanently encamped in Sadr City, Sadr is in hiding in Iran, and splinter groups of his militia are being pummled from Diyala to Sadr City. All of this is occurring with the explicit approval of Maliki and has been ongoing for months. Again, the NYT does not let facts get in the way of argument.

Iraq’s oil revenue must be apportioned fairly. . . . Then there is the endless soap opera that is one day supposed to produce a fair share-out of Iraqi oil revenues. The Bush administration prematurely popped champagne corks in February when Mr. Maliki’s cabinet agreed on a preliminary draft. Now, in May, there is no share-out, no legislation and even the preliminary agreement is starting to unravel.

The oil sharing law is with Parliament and is expected to be voted on this month. It provides for oil wealth of the nation to be centrally collected then spent on a per capita basis. You cannot get fairer then that. There is no hold up from Maliki on this. The Kurds are screaming bloody murder because they want to break away and create their own state eventually - thus, they want to control the oil wealth in their sector of the country. But, the Kurds do not have the numbers in Parliament to stop this legislation. It should be voted on in the last week of May. The NYT is trying to use this one as a bad fact while they still can. Unfortunately for the NYT, all of this negative press only insures that, when the law passes, it will be hailed as a major development. That is the danger of this type of partisan overreaching in which the NYT is engaging.

Anti-Baathist laws now used to deny Sunni Arabs employment and political opportunities must be rewritten to target only those responsible for the crimes of the Saddam Hussein era.

This is a red herring. It was long thought that a quick de-baathification would draw Sunni support for the government and winnow them away from al Qaeda. Events have overtaken this one. The Sunnis have given their support over to the government for a host of reasons, and are rueing the fact that they abstained from taking real part in the elections. For Shias, they are afraid of a quick de-Baathification because of fears of Sunnis back in power. Given Iraq's history, it would be unrealistic to ignore that the Shias hold those concerns. Pushing this really will be a poison pill. Legislation is in cabinet for de-baathification. It was submitted in March. When it will be out is anyone's guess. But to put it in perspective, how about our legislation on border countrol and illegal immigrants? We have been at that one for years now, and it is nowhere near as divisive as de-Baathification.

Without these steps, Mr. Maliki and his allies cannot even minimally claim to be a real national government.

Like it or not, NYT, this is the government voted on by millions of Iraqis. How you can claim them to be illegitimate is beyond me. Well, no, its not. This is simply another attempt at deligitimizing the Iraqi government. It makes it much easier to turn your back on them when the first opportunity presents.

With them, there is at least a chance that Iraqis can muster the strength to contain the chaos when, as is inevitable, American forces begin to leave.

That is an unusual and ominous sentence. It would seem that the NYT is laying the groundwork for a quick retreat, irregardless of the situation on the ground, does it not? They will lay the blame for the chaos on Bush and Maliki, rather then on al Qaeda, Iran and their own policies. I wonder how long that fallacious construct will stand?

Mr. Bush acknowledges that these benchmarks are important. Yet he refuses to insist, or let Congress insist, that Baghdad achieve them or face real consequences.

This is laying the groundwork for the argument that refusal to put in poison pills that Iraqis cannot meet is partisanship and unreasonableness on the part of Bush.

Consider the Baghdad security drive. Last week, The Washington Post reported that Mr. Maliki’s office had helped instigate the firing of senior Iraqi security officers who moved aggressively against a powerful Shiite militia. After betting so many American lives, the combat readiness of the United States Army and his own remaining credibility on this bloody push to secure the capital, it is a mystery why Mr. Bush would allow the Iraqi leader to undermine it.

It might be helpful to reread that Washington Post article and pick it apart. There is no claim that Maliki had any role in the firing of the sixteen officers, nine of whom were Sunni. Further, most of them were relieved for corruption and/or lack of effectiveness. There is a question about a few of the firings. But to paint Maliki as a sinister force attempting to block attacks on Shia militias because of that is just baseless slander. Or, as the NYT refers to it, objective journalism.

The leading Sunni Arab party in Mr. Maliki’s cabinet is now threatening to withdraw its ministers, declaring that it has “lost hope” that the Iraqi leader will deal seriously with Sunni concerns.

This is hardball politics, nothing more. This has absolutely nothing to do with the effectiveness of the Maliki government, and everything to do with the Sunnis in government seeing an opportunity to leverage America to get concessions. See here. This is just another NYT red herring.

Mr. Bush, by contrast, sees “signs of hope” in the Baghdad security situation, urges Americans to give his failed policies more time and seems offended that Congress wants to impose accountability on Baghdad and the White House.

Thus we are given a choice, I guess, between Bush's "failed policies" and the NYT/Democrat "policies to insure failure." I think I will opt for the former.

The final version of the spending bill should include explicit benchmarks and timetables for the Iraqis, even if Mr. Bush won’t let Congress back them up with a clear timetable for America’s withdrawal. If Mr. Maliki and Mr. Bush still don’t get it, Congress will have to enact new means of enforcement, and back that up with a veto-proof majority.

This is nothing more then the NYT floating the idea of poison pills that the Democrats are trying to put back into the supplemental appropriations bill. If there was any interest at all in actually suceeding in Iraq, the NYT would acknowledge the yeoman's effort of Maliki in leading the country and would focus benchmarks on security, reconstruction and the provision of basic services.

Our military has not and will not lose this war. Only our government can do that for us. And if that is the goal, then they should do it up front and take responsiblity for it, not by trying to sneak poison pills in the backdoor.

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The Left's Knickers Are Showing, President Sarkozy

Nicholas Sarkozy, a conservative who ran for President of France on a platform of signficant economic and social change, won the election decisevely with well over 80% of all eligible voters casting their ballots. One would think that this would give him a mandate to aggressively pursue his conservative adenda. Well, one would think that so long as one were not the far left of center NYT:

Arrogant, brutal, an authoritarian demagogue, a “perfect Iago”: the president-elect of France has been called a lot of unpleasant things in recent months and now has five years to prove his critics wrong.

That is a textbook reaction of the left. Yes, Mr. Sarkozy won the election and, indeed, may even have won a mandate for his political views, but for him to be successful, he must spend a good part of the next five years of his presidency proving his critics wrong? He must pander to those who did not vote for him and who do not share the views of the majority? Ridiculous - and not to mention a sure recipe for failure. Mr. Sarkozy has the next five years to pursue his conservative agenda on behalf of France. The NYT and others of their ilk have the next five years to complain about it and write hand-wringing op-eds.

This casual observation of the NYT is truly a knee jerk reaction of the left to any victory by conservatives, regardless of the mandate. If you look how "bipartisan" is defined by those left of center, it is "to convince the other party to do precisely what we propose." One can see it in action in all the left do, whether from France to our own House and Senate. Their sense of entitlement does not end simply because some misguided voters did not see the higher truth of which they are the guardians. In America, when that happens, it is invariably accompanied by ridiulous charges of voter fraud or intimidation (though these same left of center types seem to have no problems with voter intimidation when it comes to paying back big labor).

Do read the entire article here. Ahhh, the left, thy name is intellectual dishonesty.

Update: Sigmund, Carl & Alfred find related faults with this NYT story.

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Hospitals Filling As NYT Subscribers Choke On Their Cornflakes

I suspect the mass hospitalization to be reported tommorow, as the NYT runs a front page story today about success in Anbar Province:

Uneasy Alliance Is Taming One Insurgent Bastion

Anbar Province, long the lawless heartland of the tenacious Sunni Arab resistance, is undergoing a surprising transformation. Violence is ebbing in many areas, shops and schools are reopening, police forces are growing and the insurgency appears to be in retreat.

“Many people are challenging the insurgents,” said the governor of Anbar, Maamoon S. Rahid, though he quickly added, “We know we haven’t eliminated the threat 100 percent.”

Many Sunni tribal leaders, once openly hostile to the American presence, have formed a united front with American and Iraqi government forces against Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia. With the tribal leaders’ encouragement, thousands of local residents have joined the police force. About 10,000 police officers are now in Anbar, up from several thousand a year ago. During the same period, the police force here in Ramadi, the provincial capital, has grown from fewer than 200 to about 4,500, American military officials say.

At the same time, American and Iraqi forces have been conducting sweeps of insurgent strongholds, particularly in and around Ramadi, leaving behind a network of police stations and military garrisons, a strategy that is also being used in Baghdad, Iraq’s capital, as part of its new security plan.

Yet for all the indications of a heartening turnaround in Anbar, the situation, as it appeared during more than a week spent with American troops in Ramadi and Falluja in early April, is at best uneasy and fragile.

Municipal services remain a wreck; local governments, while reviving, are still barely functioning; and years of fighting have damaged much of Ramadi.

The insurgency in Anbar — a mix of Islamic militants, former Baathists and recalcitrant tribesmen — still thrives among the province’s overwhelmingly Sunni population, killing American and Iraqi security forces and civilians alike. [This was underscored by three suicide car-bomb attacks in Ramadi on Monday and Tuesday, in which at least 15 people were killed and 47 were wounded, American officials said. Eight American service members — five marines and three soldiers — were killed in two attacks on Thursday and Friday in Anbar, the American military said.]

Furthermore, some American officials readily acknowledge that they have entered an uncertain marriage of convenience with the tribes, some of whom were themselves involved in the insurgency, to one extent or another. American officials are also negotiating with elements of the 1920 Revolution Brigades, a leading insurgent group in Anbar, to join their fight against Al Qaeda.

These sudden changes have raised questions about the ultimate loyalties of the United States’ new allies. “One day they’re laying I.E.D.’s, the next they’re police collecting a pay check,” said Lt. Thomas R. Mackesy, an adviser to an Iraqi Army unit in Juwayba, east of Ramadi, referring to improvised explosive devices.

And it remains unclear whether any of the gains in Anbar will transfer to other troubled areas of Iraq — like Baghdad, Diyala Province, Mosul and Kirkuk, where violence rages and the ethnic and sectarian landscape is far more complicated.

Still, the progress has inspired an optimism in the American command that, among some officials, borders on giddiness. It comes after years of fruitless efforts to drive a wedge between moderate resistance fighters and those, like Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, who seem beyond compromise.

“There are some people who would say we’ve won the war out here,” said Col. John. A. Koenig, a planning officer for the Marines who oversees governing and economic development issues in Anbar. “I’m cautiously optimistic as we’re going forward.”

A New Calm

For most of the past few years, the Government Center in downtown Ramadi, the seat of the provincial government, was under near-continual siege by insurgents, who reduced it to little more than a bullet-ridden bunker of broken concrete, sandbags and trapped marines. Entering meant sprinting from an armored vehicle to the front door of the building to evade snipers’ bullets.

Now, however, the compound and nearby buildings are being renovated to create offices for the provincial administration, council and governor. Hotels are being built next door for the waves of visitors the government expects once it is back in business.

On the roof of the main building, Capt. Jason Arthaud, commander of Company B, First Battalion, Sixth Marines, said the building had taken no sniper fire since November. “Just hours of peace and quiet,” he deadpanned. “And boredom.”

Violence has fallen swiftly throughout Ramadi and its sprawling rural environs, residents and American and Iraqi officials said. Last summer, the American military recorded as many as 25 violent acts a day in the Ramadi region, ranging from shootings and kidnappings to roadside bombs and suicide attacks. In the past several weeks, the average has dropped to four acts of violence a day, American military officials said.

On a recent morning, American and Iraqi troops, accompanied by several police officers, went on a foot patrol through a market in the Malaab neighborhood of Ramadi. Only a couple of months ago, American and Iraqi forces would enter the area only in armored vehicles. People stopped and stared. The sight of police and military forces in the area, particularly on foot, was still novel.

The new calm is eerie and unsettling, particularly for anyone who knew the city even several months ago.

“The complete change from night to day gives me pause,” said Capt. Brice Cooper, 26, executive officer of Company B, First Battalion, 26th Infantry Regiment, First Infantry Division, which has been stationed in the city and its outskirts since last summer. “A month and a half ago we were getting shot up. Now we’re doing civil affairs work.”

A Moderate Front

The turnabout began last September, when a federation of tribes in the Ramadi area came together as the Anbar Salvation Council to oppose the fundamentalist militants of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia.

Among the council’s founders were members of the Abu Ali Jassem tribe, based in a rural area of northern Ramadi. The tribe’s leader, Sheik Tahir Sabbar Badawie, said in a recent interview that members of his tribe had fought in the insurgency that kept the Americans pinned down on their bases in Anbar for most of the last four years.

“If your country was occupied by Iraq, would you fight?” he asked. “Enough said.”

But while the anti-American sheiks in Anbar and Al Qaeda both opposed the Americans, their goals were different. The sheiks were part of a relatively moderate front that sought to drive the Americans out of Iraq; some were also fighting to restore Sunni Arab power. But Al Qaeda wanted to go even further and impose a fundamentalist Islamic state in Anbar, a plan that many of the sheiks did not share.

Al Qaeda’s fighters began to use killing, intimidation and financial coercion to divide the tribes and win support for their agenda. They killed about 210 people in the Abu Ali Jassem tribe alone and kidnapped others, demanding ransoms as high as $65,000 per person, Sheik Badawie said.

For all the sheiks’ hostility toward the Americans, they realized that they had a bigger enemy, or at least one that needed to be fought first, as a matter of survival.

The council sought financial and military support from the Iraqi and American governments. In return the sheiks volunteered hundreds of tribesmen for duty as police officers and agreed to allow the construction of joint American-Iraqi police and military outposts throughout their tribal territories.

A similar dynamic is playing out elsewhere in Anbar, a desert region the size of New York State that stretches west of Baghdad to the Syrian and Jordanian borders. Tribal cooperation with the American and Iraqi commands has led to expanded police forces in the cities of Husayba, Hit, Rutba, Baghdadi and Falluja, officials say.

With the help of the Anbar sheiks, the military equation immediately became simpler for the Americans in Ramadi. The number of enemies they faced suddenly diminished, American and Iraqi officials said. They were able to move more freely through large areas. With the addition of the tribal recruits, the Americans had enough troops to build and operate garrisons in areas they cleared, many of which had never seen any government security presence before.

And the Americans were now fighting alongside people with a deep knowledge of the local population and terrain, and with a sense of duty, vengeance and righteousness.

“We know this area, we know the best way to talk to the people and get information from them,” said Capt. Hussein Abd Nusaif, a police commander in a neighborhood in western Ramadi, who carries a Kalashnikov with an Al Capone-style “snail drum” magazine. “We are not afraid of Al Qaeda. We will fight them anywhere and anytime.”

Beginning last summer and continuing through March, the American-led joint forces pressed into the city, block by block, and swept the farmlands on its outskirts. In many places the troops met fierce resistance. Scores of American and Iraqi security troops were killed or wounded.

The Ramadi region is essentially a police state now, with some 6,000 American troops, 4,000 Iraqi soldiers and 4,500 Iraqi police officers, including an auxiliary police force of about 2,000, all local tribesmen, known as the Provincial Security Force. The security forces are garrisoned in more than 65 police stations, military bases and joint American-Iraqi combat outposts, up from no more than 10 a year ago. The population of the city is officially about 400,000, though the current number appears to be much lower.

To help control the flow of traffic and forestall attacks, the American military has installed an elaborate system of barricades and checkpoints. In some of the enclaves created by this system, which American commanders frequently call “gated communities,” no vehicles except bicycles and pushcarts are allowed for fear of car bombs.

American commanders see the progress in Anbar as a bellwether for the rest of country. “One of the things I worry about in Baghdad is we won’t have the time to do the same kind of thing,” Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, commander of day-to-day war operations in Iraq, said in an interview here.

Yet the fact that Anbar is almost entirely Sunni and not riven by the same sectarian feuds as other violent places, like Baghdad and Diyala Province, has helped to establish order. Elsewhere, security forces are largely Shiite and are perceived by many Sunnis as part of the problem. In Anbar, however, the new police force reflects the homogeneous face of the province and appears to enjoy the support of the people.

A Growing Police Force

Military commanders say they cannot completely account for the whereabouts of the insurgency. They say they believe that many guerrillas have been killed, while others have gone underground, laid down their arms or migrated to other parts of Anbar, particularly the corridor between Ramadi and Falluja, the town of Karma north of Falluja and the sprawling rural zones around Falluja, including Zaidon and Amariyat al-Falluja on the banks of the Euphrates River. American forces come under attack in these areas every day.

Still other guerrillas, the commanders acknowledge, have joined the police force, sneaking through a vetting procedure that is set up to catch only known suspects. Many insurgents “are fighting for a different side now,” said Brig. Gen. Mark Gurganus, commander of ground forces in Anbar. “I think that’s where the majority have gone.”

But American commanders say they are not particularly worried about infiltrators among the new recruits. Many of the former insurgents now in the police, they say, were probably low-level operatives who were mainly in it for the money and did relatively menial tasks, like planting roadside bombs.

The speed of the buildup has led to other problems. Hiring has outpaced the building of police academies, meaning that many new officers have been deployed with little or no training. Without enough uniforms, many new officers patrol in civilian clothes, some with their heads wrapped in scarves or covered in balaclavas to conceal their identities. They look no different than the insurgents shown in mujahedeen videos.

Commanders seem to regard these issues as a necessary cost of quickly building a police force in a political environment that is, in the words of Colonel Koenig, “sort of like looking through smoke.” The police force, they say, has been the most critical component of the new security plan in Anbar.

Yet, oversight of the police forces by American forces and the central Iraqi government is weak, leaving open the possibility that some local leaders are using newly armed tribal members as their personal death squads to settle old scores.

Several American officers who work with the Iraqi police said a lot of police work was conducted out of their view, particularly at night. “It’s like the Mafia,” one American soldier in Juwayba said.

General Odierno said, “We have to watch them very closely to make sure we’re not forming militias.”

But there is a new sense of commitment by the police, American and Iraqi officials say, in part because they are patrolling their own neighborhoods. Many were motivated to join after they or their communities were attacked by Al Qaeda, and their successes have made them an even greater target of insurgent car bombs and suicide attacks.

Abd Muhammad Khalaf, 28, a policeman in the Jazeera district on Ramadi’s northern edge, is typical. He joined the police after Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia killed two of his brothers, he said. “I will die when God wills it,” he said. “But before I die, I will support my friends and kill some terrorists.”

The Tasks Ahead

Some tribal leaders now working with the Americans say they harbor deep resentment toward the Shiite-led administration of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, accusing it of pursuing a sectarian agenda. Yet they also say they are invested in the democratic process now.

After boycotting the national elections in 2005, many are now planning to participate in the next round of provincial elections, which have yet to be scheduled, as a way to build on the political and military gains they have made in recent months.

“Since I was a little boy, I have seen nothing but warfare — against the Kurds, Iranians, Kuwait, the Americans,” Sheik Badawie said. “We are tired of war. We are going to fight through the ballot box.”

Already, tribal leaders are participating in local councils that have been formed recently throughout the Ramadi area under the guidance of the American military.

Iraqi and American officials say the sheiks’ embrace of representative government reflects the new realities of power in Anbar. “Out here it’s been, ‘Who can defend his people?’ ” said Brig. Gen. John R. Allen, deputy commanding general of coalition forces in Anbar. “After the war it’s, ‘Who was able to reconstruct?’ ”

Indeed, American and Iraqi officials say that to hold on to the security gains and the public’s support, they must provide services to residents in areas they have tamed.

But successful development, they argue, will depend on closing the divide between the Shiite-dominated government in Baghdad, which has long ignored the province, and the local leadership in Anbar, which has long tried to remain independent from the capital. If that fails, they say, the Iraqi and American governments may have helped to organize and arm a potent enemy.

Read the entire article here. The Reid, Pelosi, Murtha position just became a lot less tenable.

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The NYT Goes Wolf(owitz) Hunting - But On What Grounds?

I will admit that I have have not been following the Wolfowitz saga that closely. But as least one reader has. I received this e-mail today from Steve H that I reprint here in its entirety and with a few minor additions of my own:

I thought you'd find the contrast between these two articles stunning. The
Left is doing a hatchet job on Wolfowitz for obvious reason so he asked that
the bank release all his records. Read this from the NYT.

"Time for Mr. Wolfowitz to Go"

The reason Paul Wolfowitz should resign as president of the World Bank . . . [is] because he made clean governance his main cause at the bank and has fallen far short of his own standards.

The facts are not in dispute. When Mr. Wolfowitz was appointed he was in a personal relationship with a woman employed there. Since working under Mr. Wolfowitz’s supervision would violate the bank’s conflict-of-interest rules, she was reassigned to the State Department, where she initially worked under Liz Cheney, the vice president’s daughter.

She remained on the bank’s payroll, and it now turns out that Mr. Wolfowitz helped arrange for her to receive a whopping $60,000 raise. Mr. Wolfowitz has launched a full rearguard action, apologizing to the staff, pledging full cooperation with any investigation, and appealing to staff members not to hold his “previous job” against him.

Now compare that gem of New York Times' opinion writing with the somewhat more substantive and factually developed one from the WSJ:

"The Wolfowitz Files"

The anatomy of a World Bank smear.

The World Bank released its files in the case of President Paul Wolfowitz's ethics on Friday, and what a revealing download it is. On the evidence in these 109 pages, it is clearer than ever that this flap is a political hit based on highly selective leaks to a willfully gullible press corps.

. . . The documents tell a very different story--one that makes us wonder if some bank officials weren't trying to ambush Mr. Wolfowitz from the start.

. . . The paper trail shows that Mr. Wolfowitz had asked to recuse himself from matters related to his girlfriend, a longtime World Bank employee, before he signed his own employment contract. The bank's general counsel at the time, Roberto Danino, wrote in a May 27, 2005 letter to Mr. Wolfowitz's lawyers:

"First, I would like to acknowledge that Mr. Wolfowitz has disclosed to the Board, through you, that he has a pre-existing relationship with a Bank staff member, and that he proposes to resolve the conflict of interest in relation to Staff Rule 3.01, Paragraph 4.02 by recusing himself from all personnel matters and professional contact related to the staff member." (Our emphasis here and elsewhere.)

That would have settled the matter at any rational institution, given that his girlfriend, Shaha Riza, worked four reporting layers below the president in the bank hierarchy. But the bank board--composed of representatives from donor nations--decided to set up an ethics committee to investigate. And it was the ethics committee that concluded that Ms. Riza's job entailed a "de facto conflict of interest" that could only be resolved by her leaving the bank.

Ms. Riza was on a promotion list at the time, and so the bank's ethicists also proposed that she be compensated for this blow to her career. In a July 22, 2005, ethics committee discussion memo, Mr. Danino noted that "there would be two avenues here for promotion--an 'in situ' promotion to Grade GH for the staff member" and promotion through competitive selection to another position." Or, as an alternative, "The Bank can also decide, as part of settlement of claims, to offer an ad hoc salary increase."

Five days later, on July 27, ethics committee chairman Ad Melkert formally advised Mr. Wolfowitz in a memo that "the potential disruption of the staff member's career prospect will be recognized by an in situ promotion on the basis of her qualifying record . . ." In the same memo, Mr. Melkert recommends "that the President, with the General Counsel, communicates this advice" to the vice president for human resources "so as to implement" it immediately.

And in an August 8 letter, Mr. Melkert advised that the president get this done pronto: "The EC [ethics committee] cannot interact directly with staff member situations, hence Xavier [Coll, the human resources vice president] should act upon your instruction." Only then did Mr. Wolfowitz instruct Mr. Coll on the details of Ms. Riza's new job and pay raise.

Needless to say, none of this context has appeared in the media smears suggesting that Mr. Wolfowitz pulled a fast one to pad the pay of Ms. Riza. Yet the record clearly shows he acted only after he had tried to recuse himself but then wasn't allowed to do so by the ethics committee. And he acted only after that same committee advised him to compensate Ms. Riza for the damage to her career from a "conflict of interest" that was no fault of her own.

My comment: This is an incredibly transparent and ham-handed set-up of Mr. Wolfowitz. This is even more of a non-scandal then the fired U.S. Attorneys. And it is no surpise that the NYT buys into it completely. Is there nothing the New York Times will not dissemble about in order to see covervatives gutted and the far left take power in America? They need to be forced to reorganize as a 527 organization. Steve's comment: Paul Wolfowitz, meet the Duke lacrosse team.

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The NY Times on PM Maliki and the Surge - a Study in Spin

If one believes the NYT, "[t]here is no possible triumph in Iraq and very little hope left." At least that is the position they take in their recent editorial, Four Years Later in Iraq, itself an insane hatchet job on the surge and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki that defies belief. It does not merely spin the facts, it ignores them, thus entering into the realm of lying to its readers.

As a threshold matter, PM Maliki is making significant political strides in leading his country. As recently as a few months ago, the U.S. government had about given up on him as both ineffective and beholden to the Sadrists. But Maliki has exploded that paradigm, and emerged as a true leader. Maliki has led the initiative to draft and put into legislation a hydrocarbon law for the use of oil revenues fairly throughout the country, and he has done the same for a law to bring the de-Baathification process to an end, something so important for bringing Sunnis into support of the government. As an aside, it should be noted that the NYT incorrectly reported that legislation to end the de-Baathification process was dead because Grand Ayatollah Sistani refused to support it. Despite Sistani's subsequent clarification of the statement falsely attributed to him, NYT has yet to print a correction.

Moreover, Maliki has openly broken with Sadr, supporting Operation Imposing the Law which has seen the occupation of Sadr City as well as U.S. attacks on Sadr's militia. Even beyond that, Maliki has announced that he will replace the Sadrist ministers in his government. In addition, Maliki has become a bulwark against Iranian influence, supporting or at least allowing the U.S. attacks on Iran's interests in Iraq. These are all major and positive developments. But you would not know any of that from the NYT's recent editorial Four Years Later in Iraq, banging the drum beat of defeatism and sounding the Democrats new meme, posited most recently in the Washington Post by Joe Biden, that the new counterinsurgency strategy cannot possibly work, all the while wholly ignoring any of the above facts. Indeed, the NYT wrote:

[Bush] seems to imagine that should [the surge] succeed, the Shiite-dominated government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki will, without any serious pressure from Washington, take the steps toward sharing political power and economic resources it has tenaciously resisted since the day it took office a year ago (emphasis added).

Unless Mr. Maliki takes those steps — eliminating militia and death squad members from the Iraqi Army and police, fairly sharing oil revenues, and rolling back laws that deny political and economic opportunities to the Sunni middle class — no lasting security gains are possible. More Iraqi and American lives will be sacrificed.

. . . Mr. Maliki’s supporters can be even more frightening to listen to. This week’s demonstration in Najaf was organized by the fiercely anti-American Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr, whose political party and militia helped put Mr. Maliki in power and are still among his most important allies.

Two months into the Baghdad security drive, the gains Mr. Bush is banking on have not materialized. More American soldiers continue to arrive, and their commanders are talking about extending the troop buildup through the fall or into early next year. After four years, the political trend is even more discouraging.

One wonders if the NYT editors bother to read the news. Or is it that their partisanship has reached the level where they are simply lying to America in support of the anti-war Democrats?

If you want a more realistic picture on PM Maliki, Iranian author and columnist Amir Taheri obliges:

A few months ago, Washington circles saw him as "Tehran's man" in Baghdad. Today, Tehran circles label him "Washington's man" in Baghdad. The man thus targeted is Iraq's Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki whose coalition government has the unenviable task of keeping the Americans in, when they do not want to stay, and the Iranians out, when they want to come in.

Those Americans, including some leaders of the new Democrat majority in Washington, who opposed the liberation of Iraq from the start, or changed their minds about it later, blame Maliki for doing nothing to hasten the departure of US troops.

They attack Maliki for not imposing a blanket pardon of Baathists regardless of what they did during four decades of despotic domination.

They also take him to task for rejecting federal schemes that could lead to the disintegration of the Iraqi state. Also, they criticize Maliki because he refuses the sharing out Iraq's income form oil as if it were loot among thieves. These American critics want Maliki to throw Iraq to the wolves so that Jack Murtha and Michael Moore can prove that toppling Saddam Hussein was wrong.

Maliki's Khomeinist critics in Tehran have their own beef with him.

To start with, as the Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) noted recently, Maliki is "too pro-Arab". Translated into plain language this means that the Khomeinists dislike Maliki because he emphasizes the Iraqi Shiite majority's Arab identity rather than religious affiliation.

Last month, Ali Khamenehei the top mullah in the Khomeinist system, attacked Maliki in a round-about way. He recalled that many leaders of new Iraq spent years in Iran as exiles, and implied that it was payback time.

Maliki, however, has offered no favors to the mullahs. He visited half a dozen capitals in the early stages of his premiership, but pointedly left out Tehran. He also turned out Tehran's offer of hosting a regional conference on Iraq, preferring to hold the exercise first in Baghdad and, later this year, in Cairo.

Maliki has also given the green light to a crackdown on Shiite militias and death-squads, serving notice that the war of the sectarians must end.

Within the next few weeks, Maliki is expected to further anger Tehran by dropping from his Cabinet all the five Sadrist ministers beholden to the mullahs.

Tehran has already indicated its displeasure by activating its networks in Iraq to organize last week's demonstrations in Najaf.

Despite months of pressure from Tehran, Maliki has also refused to scrap the maritime inspection mission of the coalition forces under a mandate from the United Nations Security Council. (The 15 British sailors captured by Tehran last month were operating within that mission.)

Tehran wants the mission terminated for two reasons.

First, it wants to impose total control on the Shatt al-Arab, a border waterway between Iran and Iraq, thus violating the 1975 Algiers agreement that established the thalweg (the deepest channel in the river) as the frontier between the two neighbors.

Exclusive control of the estuary would enable the Islamic Republic to impose its terms for a future continental shelf agreement with both Iraq and Kuwait. In plain language, the Islamic Republic wishes to control access to Iraq's 75-kilometre long coastline on the Gulf, turning the Iraqi ports of Basra, Um-Qasar, Al-Bakr and Fao into strategic hostages.

If such a scheme were imposed, the Islamic Republic would also control access to the Kuwait islands of Warbah and Bubiyan, designated as new development zones by the Kuwaiti government.

The second reason why Tehran wants Maliki to scrap the maritime inspection mission is the mullahs' fear that the UN might, at some point, use the mechanism against the Islamic Republic in the context of the current showdown over the nuclear issue.

The two resolutions recently passed by the United Nations' Security Council against the Islamic Republic, would allow the monitoring of Iranian naval traffic in the Gulf to continue from Iraqi bases even after the US-led coalition has left Iraq.

The Maliki government has also made a number of moves to reassert Iraqi sovereignty over chunks of the border with the Islamic Republic that had become no-man's land or seized by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRCG).

The IRCG captured part of the Zaynalkosh salient, some 1800 square-kilometers, shortly after the fall of Saddam Hussein, and has built a number of fortifications there. The Maliki government, however, has refused to accept what is, in effect, an open theft of Iraqi.

Tehran is also sore that the Maliki government has re-imposed visas for Iranians, making it more difficult to smuggle Khomeinist agents among the thousands of Iranian pilgrims who travel to Iraq each day.

Worse still, the Maliki government has arrested, or acquiesced in the arrest of, more than a dozen senior IRGC officers, including two generals still held by the Americans in Baghdad.

The most important cause of Tehran's anger, however, is Maliki's strategic vision of Iraq's relations with the Western democracies, led by the United States.

The mullahs want Iraq to become a theatre of historic humiliation for Western democracies, especially the US.

They hope to see the Americans and their allies running away, not withdrawing in the context of an agreement with a friendly Iraqi government. They want the credit for chasing away the Americans to go to Tehran and its Iraqi allies, notably Muqtada al-Sadr.

Maliki, however, wants the US-led coalition out of Iraq only when new Iraq is capable of defending itself against its enemies, including the Khomeinist regime in Tehran. Beyond that, he wants to maintain a strategic partnership with the Western democracies in the interest of Iraq's economic development and social transformation.

Maliki is attacked by both the mullahs and Jack Murtha Democrats in Washington. Both hate him because he is working to prevent their respective dreams from coming true.

The mullahs dream of that "last helicopter" that flies from the rooftop of the US Embassy in Baghdad, spelling the end of the American hopes of bringing decent government to Iraq.

The Murtha Democrats may not want a conclusive American defeat in Iraq, but would like something that looks like one. Only perceived defeat in Iraq would give their party something with which to unite its base and make a bid for the White House next year.

It may be a coincidence. However, each time Congressman Murtha throws a poisonous arrow at Maliki, he is followed by one of Tehran's mullahs doing the same. Who knows, may be Maliki is doing something right!

That certainly is not the picture painted by the New York Times. And, besides their prevarication on Maliki, there was also this little gem of deceit in their editorial:

After four years of occupation, untold numbers killed by death squads and suicide bombers, and searing experiences like Abu Ghraib, few Iraqis still look on American soldiers as liberators. Instead, thousands marked this week’s anniversary by burning American flags and marching through the streets of Najaf chanting, “Death to America.”

That the NYT would portray the recent protest march in Najaf - called by Sadr - as proof positive that Iraqis hate the U.S. and want us out goes far beyond mere spin and into the realm of outright dissembling. That march was supposed to demostrate Sadr's support in Iraq. Up to 1,000,000 people where expected to participate. The number of people that showed up was less then 10,000, and likely between 5,000 and 7,000. The reality is to that the march demonstrated the tremendous degree to which support for Sadr and his pro-Iranian, anti-U.S. message has declined in Iraq.

So what are the only reasonable conclusions from the above. One is certainly not that we have lost in Iraq, nor is another that the surge is DOA and cannot possibly succeed. The only reasonable conclusion is that the NYT is lying to America and is wholly in the pocket of the anti-war left. As a news organization, the NYT cannot be trusted.

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NYT – Spinning Out Of Control In Reporting Sadr’s March

The New York Times long ago moved from giving us the news in their factual reporting and into giving us a message. On April 9, Moqtada al Sadr ordered a rally against the U.S. The turnout was extremely low, but you would never get that from the Times, who portray Sadr as a figure of vast power who appeals to the whole country, not just Shias. The clear message from the NYT’s reporting is that Iraqis want us out of their country. You have to love how they go about it.

The headline says “Huge Protest in Iraq Demands U.S. Withdraw.” Now, to put this in perspective, Iraq is a country of over 26,000,000 people. Of those, about 14,000,000 are Shia. The NYT tells us that Mr. Sadr can “command the masses.” So when Sadr calls for all Shias to march in protest of the U.S. presence in Iraq, you would expect a “huge” turnout, would you not - perhaps 1,000,000 people as an AP video says was expected? (The AP video is accessible off the NYT website. If you watch the AP video, note that they appear to show Sadr speaking at the rally. The truth is he hasn't been seen in Iraq for two months and that he was likely no closer to the march then the distance between Najaf and Tehran. The AP and the NYT apparently went to the same ethics school).

The NYT reports that the U.S. military, at the conclusion of the rally, put the number of protestors at only 5,000 to 7,000. The military based that number on aerial photographs of the demonstration. That number would be disastrous for Sadr. It would show a tremendous erosion in the numbers of people who support him and his message. And as it turns out, that number is supported by Reuters, who put the number of demostrators in the "thousands."

Update: The military and Reuters figures are also supported by Omar of Iraq the Model who states:

Speaking of the Sadrists' pitiful demonstrations. His aides were hoping to gather a million marchers for yesterday but all they could manage were less than ten thousands, that's even when they bussed people from Baghdad and Basra.The Arabic-speaking al-Alam Iranian channel claims the number was "hundreds of thousands" but that's just al-Alam, other channels and the footage we saw all put the number between 5 and 10 thousand.I had personally been to a demonstration of 10 thousands once and what I saw yesterday was definitely smaller.

That won't work - not for the NYT. So what does the NYT tell us? First they quote a Najaf police captain as putting the turn out at “half a million.” Wow, that’s a slight difference. Why would the NYT even print that quote?

The importance of that quote is to make it seem much more reasonable for the NYT to discount the military and Reuters and insert their own number. Except they don't insert a number. Instead, the NYT says that the “huge” number of marchers were in the “tens of thousands.” That's a pretty big spread – somewhere between 10,000 and 90,000 or more. The difference from the U.S. military figures and from Reuters is an order of magnitude actually. Do you think the NYT could narrow it down? Or is it best for the message to leave the ambiguity?

Surely there must be photos that support the NYT and disclose the prevarication of the Army and Reuters. Actually, there is an old trick of photography. If you want the number of demonstrators to appear larger then they are, you take photos very near ground level. If you want to get a real feel for the numbers involved, you get photos from as high up as possible to show the start and end of the crowd in scale. Guess which vantage point we are given in the photos that appear in the NYT?




Just to show us the military can't be trusted, the NYT tells us that the U.S. military is spinning on the whole issue of the march – and doing so unsuccessfully at that --

Colonel Garver and other American officials tried to put the best possible light on the event, despite the fiery words. “We say that we’re here to support democracy,” he said. “We say that free speech and freedom of assembly are part of that. While we don’t necessarily agree with the message, we agree with their right to say it.” (emphasis added)

In the U.S., if Col. Garver said that about a Code Pink march, for example, it would be reported as a “statement.” But not from Iraq, where the NYT makes sure we understand that it’s the U.S. military that is doing the spinning – not the NYT.

But the NYT is not done. The NYT portrays Sadr as having a nationalistic appeal, cutting across the Sunni Shia divide. I guess it is best for the message if all Iraqis want us out, not just some of the Shia who have strong ties to the theocracy in Iran.

Mr. Sadr used the protest to try to reassert his image as a nationalist rebel who appeals to both anti-American Shiites and Sunni Arabs, . . . But his nationalist credentials have been tarnished in the last year, as Sunni Arabs have accused Mr. Sadr’s militia, the Mahdi Army, of torturing and killing Sunnis.

Tarnished? One would think that those “credentials” are more then a little “tarnished” among the Sunni population whom his milita have been slaughtering for the past three years. That is kind of like saying that Ahmedinejad’s reputation is a little “tarnished” among Israelis.

It takes the NYT about 15 paragraphs to get to some real news – that Sadr does not control his militia anymore, but the NYT does not dig into this. Actually, news from the “surge” - not mentioned by name in this NYT piece – is that the U.S. Army has been rolling up a tremendous number of Mahdi Army members in their new counterinsurgency operation, now only eight weeks old and, as Bill Rogio is reporting from Iraq, “the split in Sadr's Mahdi Army has led to a large segment looking to reconcile with the Iraqi government.” It will be long before we see those facts coming out in the NYT.

The NYT wanted to portray Sadr’s failed rally as being something completely different - a strong message from the heartland of Iraq. That is clearly the message Moqtada – and Iran and the NYT – want the US citizens to understand.

Could the NYT have spun this whole story any more? It's hard to imagine how. The NYT have not been a newspaper for several years now. Its one thing for a newspaper to take a partisan stance in their editorials - and quite another for a newspaper to try and shape the facts in their straight reporting. The NYT is nothing more these days then a shill for the partisan left. There is nothing remotely patriotic about the NYT. There is nothing remotely neutral about the NYT. And as their ever dwindling circulation and stock value indicate, most of America is smart enough to realize it. Perhaps the NYT will reorganize as a 527 organization before their value reaches zero.

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McCain on the News from Iraq We Aren't Hearing

This editorial by Senator John McCain in today's Washington Post:

I just returned from my fifth visit to Iraq since 2003 -- and my first since Gen. David Petraeus's new strategy has started taking effect. For the first time, our delegation was able to drive, not use helicopters, from the airport to downtown Baghdad. For the first time, we met with Sunni tribal leaders in Anbar province who are working with American and Iraqi forces to combat al-Qaeda. For the first time, we visited Iraqi and American forces deployed in a joint security station in Baghdad -- an integral part of the new strategy. We held a news conference to discuss what we saw: positive signs, underreported in the United States, that are reason for cautious optimism.

. . . The new political-military strategy is beginning to show results. But most Americans are not aware because much of the media are not reporting it or devote far more attention to car bombs and mortar attacks that reveal little about the strategic direction of the war. I am not saying that bad news should not be reported or that horrific terrorist attacks are not newsworthy. But news coverage should also include evidence of progress. Whether Americans choose to support or oppose our efforts in Iraq, I hope they could make their decision based on as complete a picture of the situation in Iraq as is possible to report. A few examples:

· Sunni sheikhs in Anbar are now fighting al-Qaeda. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki visited Anbar's capital, Ramadi, to meet with Sunni tribal leaders. The newly proposed de-Baathification legislation grew out of that meeting. Police recruitment in Ramadi has increased dramatically over the past four months.

· More than 50 joint U.S.-Iraqi stations have been established in Baghdad. Regular patrols establish connections with the surrounding neighborhood, resulting in a significant increase in security and actionable intelligence.

· Extremist Shiite militia leader Moqtada al-Sadr is in hiding, his followers are not contesting American forces, sectarian violence has dropped in Baghdad and we are working with the Shiite mayor of Sadr City.

· Iraqi army and police forces are increasingly fighting on their own and with American forces, and their size and capability are growing. Iraqi army and police casualties have increased because they are fighting more.

. . . There is no guarantee that we will succeed, but we must try. As every sensible observer has concluded, the consequences of failure in Iraq are so grave and so threatening for the region, and to the security of the United States, that to refuse to give Petraeus's plan a chance to succeed would constitute a tragic failure of American resolve. I hope those who cite the Iraq Study Group's conclusions note that James Baker wrote on this page last week that we must have bipartisan support for giving the new strategy time to succeed. This is not a moment for partisan gamesmanship or for one-sided reporting. The stakes are just too high.

Read the entire article here. As to McCain's complaint of underreporting of positive news from Iraq, it is worthy of note that McCain's Iraq visit and his newsconference on this same topic was not only underreported in many quarters of the MSM, but mocked in the NY Times, who covered it by juxtaposing McCain's news conference with other news of U.S. casualties from Iraq:

4 G.I.'s Among Dead In Iraq; McCain Cites Progress.

Mortar attacks, suicide car bombs, roadside bombs, ambushes and gun battles killed at least two dozen people on Sunday, including four American soldiers, the authorities said.

The American military command said the soldiers were killed southwest of Baghdad just after midnight as they responded to an earlier bombing that had killed two other American soldiers. The insurgents have frequently tried to reap greater death tolls by carrying out attacks against rescue crews rushing to bomb sites. . .

The report continues on with some short notes about McCain's news conference, but no substantive news about whether the surge is in fact succeeding in its counterinsurgency mission inside Baghdad proper. Reading this, one might almost suspect that there is not only the ommission of positive news from Iraq of which McCain complains, but more then a bit of active media bias.

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The New York Times At Their Most Irresponsible and Disingenuous

Sunni Militants Disrupt Plan To Calm Baghdad.

That is today's lead headline in the New York Times. It is accompanied by an editorial claiming the Iraq war is lost and that we need to immediately leave Iraq.

Leaving the editorial aside for the moment, the clear message of the headline is that the surge is not succeeding.

Murders must be up in Baghdad. Casualties must be rising. Obviously, there must be significant facts for the NYT, the newspaper of record, to make the claim that the surge in Baghdad has been disrupted. But, in short - no, there are no such facts.

I had to read the article three times. The NYT’s only two factual underpinnings for their headline are that, one, a car bomb exploded Saturday in Baghdad killing two people, and two, in February, there were 44 car bombs exploded in Baghdad. That is the sum total of the NYT's evidence that Sunni militants have succeeded in derailing the surge. The NYT provides no other factual information about the surge. Indeed, the NYT does not even provide information about the damage caused by the 44 explosions in Baghdad during the entire month of February, nor does the NYT deliniate how many of those 44 explosions occurred in Baghdad after the surge began. And still on that same topic, the NYT does not address how many car bombs have occurred thus far in Baghdad during March.

The NYT, in the remainder of the lead article, discusses how al Qaeda in Iraq is switching tactics to emphasize car bombings. But the NYT does not document how car bombs in Baghdad have somehow derailed the surge. It gets yet more disingenuous, because the NYT does not even give the facts and circumstances surrounding the detonation of the one specific car bomb they cite in support of their headline, the car bomb that occurred in March and that killed the two people in Baghdad.

Car bombs are aimed at high density targets – the suicide bomber is shooting for a market or mosque packed with people. For there to have been only two people killed – and no mention of other casualties – one of two things had to have happened. Either there was an unplanned early detonation, OR . . . the bomber was stopped at a checkpoint in Baghdad and just went ahead and detonated. In other words, it could very well be that the two casualties count as a success in evaluating the surge. And given the prevarication in this article, I strongly suspect that to be the case.

In sum, given NYT's clear insinuation of failure of the surge in the headline, given NYT's lack of factual underpinning for the headline in the body, and given the NYT's omission of any of the wealth of salient facts available to assess the success of the surge to this point, it is fair to say that never before have I seen or read anything so disingenuous as this lead article in today's NYT.

Quite literally, every news report on the surge that looks to actual facts discusses how the violence in Baghdad is significantly down. No one is willing to claim the surge a success yet, but what you hear at every turn are the words "cautious optimism."

For example, this is a report from two days ago, a report by a U.S. Brigade in Baghdad:

Moving coalition forces out of big forward operating bases and into smaller community-based combat outposts as part of the Baghdad Security Plan has reduced violence and helped to stabilize northwestern Baghdad, a senior Army officer serving there said today.

Murders are down by more than half since January in the densely populated 93-square-kilometer area controlled by the 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division, said its commander, Army Col. J.B. Burton. His troops have found only 10 planted improvised explosive devices this month. That’s down from 36 in January, when 89 IEDs were detonated. So far this month, there have been only 21 IED detonations, Burton reported. . .

You can read the report here. It is typical of all the news coming out of Baghdad since the start of the surge. You can also look at here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. That is actually only a partial list going back to 1 March.

What you will find in every one of those links are facts indicating that the surge has succeeded in lessening the level of violence throughout Baghdad. By any measure, deaths are down, security is up.

And what is going on outside Baghdad is equally as important – but of course also omitted by the NYT. For example, it is critical that al Qaeda in Iraq is now targeting not U.S. or Iraqi soldiers, but Sunni civilians in Anbar province. Within the last two days, al Qaeda has set off three suicide bombs in Anbar, each including chlorine gas, injuring over 350 Sunni civilians.

Why is that important? Because it means that al Qaeda in Iraq has or is about to find itself homeless and hunted by the locals of Anbar. I would say that is pretty critical in evaluating our success in Iraq at this point. Mohammed, from Iraq the Model, himself a Sunni resident of Baghdad, explains:

With this series of dirty chemical bombings a war between al-Qaeda and the tribes in Anbar is no longer a possibility. It just became a fact.

I've read at least two very optimistic reports from al-Almada in the last week about purported victories of the tribes and police over al-Qaeda in Ramadi and Fallujah. I was reluctant to trust the accuracy of the reports which sited unnamed sources but now seeing the reaction of al-Qaeda suggests that the action of the tribes was so painful that al-Qaeda retaliated in the way we see today.

Al-Qaeda's terrorists-whom AP insists on calling insurgents-expended three suicide bombers and precious resources against their supposedly sympathetic civilian Sunni hosts instead of American and Iraqi soldiers and Shia civilians; their usual enemies.

If this indicates anything it indicates that al-Qaeda's is reprioritizing the targets on the hit list. The reason: al-Qaeda is sensing a serious threat in the change of attitude of the tribes toward them and perhaps the apparently successful meeting of the sheiks with Maliki and the agreements that were made then was the point at which open war had to be declared.

The tribes in Anbar are stubborn and they have many ruthless warriors. That's a proven fact and it looks like Al-Qaeda had just made their gravest mistake—their once best friends are just about to become their worst enemy.

Read Iraq the Model here.

But wait, there is still more news applicable to the surge that the NYT is deliberately ignoring. You will find it nowhere in this lead article, nor gracing any other page of this sorry rag. The news is from a poll. I quote from the article below and leave it to you to decide whether any of the information therein is important to ascertaining whether Sunni Militants Disrupt the Plan to Calm Baghdad.

[A]n opinion poll conducted on the eve of the fourth anniversary of the US-led invasion of Iraq has found a striking resilience and optimism among the inhabitants.

The poll, the biggest since coalition troops entered Iraq on March 20, 2003, shows that by a majority of two to one, Iraqis prefer the current leadership to Saddam Hussein’s regime, regardless of the security crisis and a lack of public services.

The survey, published today, also reveals that contrary to the views of many western analysts, most Iraqis do not believe they are embroiled in a civil war.

Officials in Washington and London are likely to be buoyed by the poll conducted by Opinion Research Business (ORB), a respected British market research company that funded its own survey of 5,019 Iraqis over the age of 18.

The 400 interviewers who fanned out across Iraq last month found that the sense of security felt by Baghdad residents had significantly improved since polling carried out before the US announced in January that it was sending in a "surge" of more than 20,000 extra troops.

The poll highlights the impact the sectarian violence has had. Some 26% of Iraqis - 15% of Sunnis and 34% of Shi’ites - have suffered the murder of a family member. Kidnapping has also played a terrifying role: 14% have had a relative, friend or colleague abducted, rising to 33% in Baghdad. Yet 49% of those questioned preferred life under Nouri al-Maliki, the prime minister, to living under Saddam. Only 26% said things had been better in Saddam’s era, while 16% said the two leaders were as bad as each other and the rest did not know or refused to answer.

Not surprisingly, the divisions in Iraqi society were reflected in statistics — Sunnis were more likely to back the previous Ba’athist regime (51%) while the Shi’ites (66%) preferred the Maliki government.. . . .

The poll suggests a significant increase in support for Maliki. A survey conducted by ORB in September last year found that only 29% of Iraqis had a favourable opinion of the prime minister.

Another surprise was that only 27% believed they were caught up in a civil war. Again, that number divided along religious lines, with 41% of Sunnis believing Iraq was in a civil war, compared with only 15% of Shi’ites.

The survey is a rare snapshot of Iraqi opinion because of the difficulty of working in the country, with the exception of Kurdish areas which are run as an essentially autonomous province.
. . . .
This weekend comments from Baghdad residents reflected the poll’s findings. Many said they were starting to feel more secure on the streets, although horrific bombings have continued.

"The Americans have checkpoints and the most important thing is they don’t ask for ID, whether you are Sunni or Shi’ite," said one resident. "There are no more fake checkpoints so you don’t need to be scared.

"The inhabitants of a northern Baghdad district were heartened to see on the concrete blocks protecting an Iraqi army checkpoint the lettering: "Down, down with the militias, we are fighting for the sake of Iraq." It would have been unthinkable just a few weeks ago. Residents said they noted that armed militias were off the streets.

Read the entire article here. Too bad this receives no mention anywhere in today’s New York Times, including in their lead article on the surge.

Bottom line, the New York Times is lying to America. This lead article is beyond spin. It is a scandal redolent of Joe Wilson's omission of fact in his now infamous op-ed.

But, the NYT are not done. In their editorial, The "Army, After Iraq," the NYT makes this assertion:

Exiting Iraq with America’s forces, credibility and regional interests intact is now, understandably, the nation’s most immediate concern. But in the process, crucial lessons need to be absorbed from this unnecessary, horribly botched and now unwinnable war.

That paragraph is the main point for the editorial. The rest is of the editorial is not but window dressing for that paragraph.

Does anyone believe anything other then that the sole lessons the NYT wants us to learn from its reporting this day and its editorial are that the war is lost, the surge has failed, and that evil incompetent republicans should never be elected to office. These jokers are beyond unreal - they are dangerous.

What can we do?

1. Notify the New York Times of your displeasure with their lead article.
(Try not to use the word bulls**t, nor terms like "you sorry m*****f****** c***s******* left wing sh**eating political whores" when expressing your sense of outrage. In other words, do exercise something close to superhuman restraint. We do not want to come off sounding like one of the Kos Kids):

NEWS DEPARTMENT
To send comments and suggestions (about news coverage only) or to report errors that call for correction, e-mail nytnews@nytimes.com or leave a message at 1-888-NYT-NEWS.

The Editors
executive-editor@nytimes.com
managing-editor@nytimes.com


2. If you have a subscription to the New York Times or New York Times Select, cancel it.

3. Make absolutely sure that your elected representatives know what the New York Times has done and ask your representatives to publicly challenge the Times for this abomination. If you are represented by Democrats, tell them too - and make sure that you appeal to their (nonexistent) ethics. Perhaps some of even our elected Democrats might feel a sense of outrage at this latest NYT stunt. At any rate, I recommend contacting our representatives because the worst thing conservatives have done over the past few years is let things like this pass to the public with no shouts of outrage from our elected officials. This by the NYT today is scandalous. It needs to generate nationwide outrage.

Your Senators

Your Representative

Sorry for my rant, folks, but this is too much. The NYT has declared war on the truth. It cannot stand.

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The Silence Is Deafening

And not to mention neither fair nor balanced. I am referring to the news coverage of the surge in the New York Times. While news from the surge appears uniformly promising at the end of the first two weeks, (see here, here, here) there is not a word of it on the front page of the New York Times. Instead, the lead is that the General in charge of Walter Reed Medical Center has been relieved of command. All I can say is thank God that the shrill leftist mouthpiece that the once respected NYT has become is continually dropping in value.

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U.S. & Germany Address Leaks Of Classified Information

Secrecy News is reporting on legislation proposed by Senator Jon Kyl (R-AZ) to criminalize the unauthorized disclosure or publication of classified information "concerning efforts by the United States to identify, investigate, or prevent terrorist activity." Read the whole story here.

Apparently, Kyl's proposal is already generating significant organized opposition from liberal organizations. This is hardly a surprise, given just how much democrats and liberal organizations have relied on selected leaks to damage the Bush administration. At a minimum, I hope there are hearings on this legislation so that we are able to learn just how much damage has been done to the U.S. counter-terrorism efforts as a result of the New York Times' six years of leaking.

On a related note, Germany has taken the opposite approach, giving constitutional protection to the unauthorized disclosure of State secrets. Der Spiegel reports that "Germany's Constitutional Court ruled on Tuesday that journalists cannot be legitimately accused of betrayal of state secrets for publishing classified information obtained from informers." See the whole story here.

Update: The Hill is reporting that opposition to the Kyl bill will likely result in watered down legislation. See the story here.

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NYT Gets It Right, Wrong & Left on Afghanistan - & NYT Misses the Vietnam Parallel

The NYT, in their follow up article on the suicide bombing in Afghanistan allegedly targeting VP Cheney:

Get it right - the Taliban is growing in strength;

Get it wrong - Suicide bombings are not a sign of that strength

Get it left - gratuitous "anonymous" criticisms of the Bush administration with no basis in reality;

And NYT misses the parallel with Vietnam: If the enemy has a safe haven; they are almost impossible to defeat.

The NYT Gets It Right.

Al Qaeda and the Taliban appear stronger and more emboldened
in the region than at any time since the American invasion of the country five years ago, and since the Bush administration claimed to have decimated much of their middle management.

That is right. The Taliban were decimated and they fall back into Pakistan, into the radical Deobandi madrasas from which they grew. The area into which they fell was Northwestern Frontier Provinces -- an area so wild that the Pakistani government has never held sway there, even though it is nominally part of Pakistan. And we know that, over the past several years, the Taliban has reorganized, trained and recruited, probably with the support of rouge elements of Pakistan's intelligence service, the ISI.

The NYT Gets It Wrong -

The audacity of a suicide-bomb attack . . . underscores . . . a deepening . . . concern that the Taliban and Al Qaeda are resurgent.

American officials insisted that the importance of the attack, by a single suicide bomber who blew himself up a mile away from where the vice president was staying, was primarily symbolic. It was more successful at grabbing headlines and filling television screens with a scene of carnage than at getting anywhere near Mr. Cheney.

But the strike nonetheless demonstrated that Al Qaeda and the Taliban appear stronger and more emboldened in the region . . .

Resorting to suicide attacks, as a historical rule, demonstrates military weakness. Such attacks are only used when the attacker does not have the military strength to achieve a victory on the battlefield. Such attacks are not emblematic of any sort of military resurgence. The fact that such attacks are not stopped beforehand is emblematic of how difficult it is to identify such attacks in advance. That is much more of a police function then a military one.

Two, the NYT hints around it but does not seem to grasp the import of such attacks. The main goal of militant Muslim suicide attacks is to be consumed by the western electorate through the prism of the Western press, who aid the terrorism through their "if it bleeds, it leads" philosophy. Suicide attacks have been adapted by the Taliban precisely for that cause. The Taliban, though insane by our standards, are by no means stupid. And they see the cumulative effect of press reports of suicide attacks on the western electorate -- the election of a group of representatives and senators who want nothing more then to leave Iraq. Thus the Taliban would be fools not to adopt such a strategy.

The NYT gets it Left:

[C]ritics [of Bush and Cheney] . . . said the strike was another reminder of how Iraq had diverted the Bush administration from finishing the job in Afghanistan.

Oh, spare me. Who said that, the author? the editor? Please, that is just so nonsensical at this point. The Taliban were driven from Afghanistan. More troops were not needed to accomplish that. And as I recall, the cries about more troops in Afghanistan had much more to do with capturing bin Laden. That is ancient history.

Two, would another two battalions in Kabul have stopped a lone suicide bomber from infiltrating? Hardly.

The NYT Misses the Vietnam Parallel:

For all of the attempts of the left to draw parallels between Vietnam and our efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan, this is the one place were such a parallel would have been accurate. The Vietnam War actually began in the early 1950's, during the Eisenhower administration. The reason it dragged on twenty years was because the prime element responsible for the war, the communist North Vietnamese, had an untouchable safe haven in their own country. It was Nixon's bombing of Hanoi in December, 1972 that finally led the North Vietnamese to come seriously to the table for peace talks. One of the first rules of war is not to allow an enemy a safe haven. That is, unfortunately, what we have with the Taliban, and al Qaeda today, safe in nominally Pakistani territory. That is a real Vietnam parallel. And it is the one that needs to be addressed immediately. The NYT missed that one.

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