This ain't Hell, but you can see it from here

Category: Terror War

  • Where’s the media on Venezuela?

     

    (Photos from Venezuela Llora)

    I’ve been waiting for the media to start covering the student protests in Venezuela for a few weeks now – but not a word. So I have to go to the bloggers. I find it odd that none of the media are doing much of anything – including the Spanish-language networks (which seem more interested in Shakira than the freedom of speech of a few million Latins).

    From A Columbo-Americana’s Perspective, Kate writes that most Venezuelan’s support the student movement;

    A Datos poll of 600 Venezuelans across social classes found 56.2 percent supported the students, with only 23.8 percent opposed to them.

    Of the rest of those surveyed, 19.3 percent had no strong opinion and 0.7 percent said they did not know or did not want to reply.

    The poll, published in newspapers on Sunday, was conducted on June 8-10 and had a margin of error of 4 percentage points.

    Of course, Hugo claims that it’s a another Bush plot;

    Chavez has accused the students of being part of a U.S.-backed “soft revolution,” saying they are trying to model their protests on the 2004 “Orange revolution” in Ukraine.

    Daniel at Venezuela News and Views writes that Chavez went to Cuba to meet with his mentor and gets the idea that more socialism is the answer;

    In front of mounting trouble Chavez did what he does usually: escape to Cuba for a few days. Now that Castro is healthy enough to discuss politics some, Chavez went to look for new inspiration. The results came today through a lengthy cadena, an unusual event on a Saturday and yet another sure sign of worries inside the government. So, trying to seize back the agenda held by the students, Chavez went on a new rampage of promises and threats:

    And from DEBKAFiles (h/t Aaron’s Rod), Chavez just came back from Tehran after discussing the future of a joint defense pact with the mullahs and Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega;

    DEBKAfile’s Iranian sources have learned add that the Islamic Republic’s rulers have been sounding out “revolutionary” Latin American governments about creating joint anti-US terrorist cells for attacks in North and South America. The subject came up in talks with Nicararagua’s Daniel Ortega when he arrived in Tehran Sunday and in discussions with Hugo Chavez of Venezuela.

    So, Hugo’s been a busy little fella, yet none of this makes it to the pages of the major media. Other than some fawning in the Associated Press about those two lovable rogues getting together in Havana;

    Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez declared Wednesday that his convalescing ally Fidel Castro has “recovered his fastball” and was in fine form during a six-hour visit.

    State TV reported the pair shared an “emotional” meeting Tuesday, discussing Venezuela-Cuba relations, climate change and a socialist-leaning regional pact they created.

    Ain’t that just the sweetest? The two major enemies of liberty in this hemisphere sharing an “emotional” meeting. This blatant disregard for impending danger is how al Qaeda became so perilous.

  • War may take decades? Oh, my!

    The newspapers all seem shocked this morning that General Patreus told Chris Wallace on Fox news Sunday yesterday that the war against the insurgency in Iraq may take years to end. The good general was quoted in the Washington Examiner;

    “In fact, typically, I think historically, counterinsurgency operations have gone at least nine or 10 years,” Gen. David Petraeus said Sunday. “The question is, of course, at what level.”

    Who thought otherwise? The President told us in the very beginning of this global war against terror it would be a hard, long slog. The biggest reason it’s a long, hard slog is because we – the United States – always seem on the precipice of surrendering. It’s happened before – we let the Chinese and North Koreans keep half of that peninsula, we let the Soviets have half of Europe, we abandoned all of Southeast Asia to the communists, we surrendered Somalia to the muslims, we stopped outside of Baghdad after we annihilated the 4th largest Army in the world. 

    And now, we have the world-famous surrendering Democrats throwing in the towel everytime there’s a corner turned. Insurgencies aren’t military campaigns in the traditional sense – the insurgents never win on the battlefield. Insurgents win in the newspapers and TV news programs of their enemies – thousands of tiny victories against the homefront.

    That’s not new, is it? I’m not the first to write those words, am I? Yet everyday, the US media grants another tiny victory to the enemy. At least once every week, the Democrats give the enemy more ammunition to fight the war – Harry Reid tells us the war is lost and that our generals are incompetent, John Murtha calls our troops murderers, Dick Durbin calls the troops at Guantanamo SS concentration camp guards.

    This war has dragged on for four years – the enemy has no hope of winning militarily. But the enemy still has hope of winning the war – why is that? Because they’ve pinned their victory on the fact that Democrats hate the Republicans, and by extension, our troops, more than they hate child-murdering terrorists.

    Kagan and Kristol have more on the slow collapse of support for al Qaeda in Iraq in the Weekly Standard article “Slow Motion Tet“;

    Last week, a group of tribal leaders in Salah-ad-Din, the mostly Sunni province due north of Baghdad, agreed to work with the Iraqi government and U.S. forces against al Qaeda. Then al Qaeda destroyed the two remaining minarets of the al-Askariya mosque in Samarra, a city in the province. Coincidence? Perhaps. But al Qaeda is clearly taking a page from the Viet Cong’s book. The terrorists have been mounting a slow-motion Tet offensive of spectacular attacks on markets, bridges, and mosques, knowing that the media report each such attack as an American defeat. The fact is that al Qaeda is steadily losing its grip in Iraq, and these attacks are alienating its erstwhile Iraqi supporters. But the terrorists are counting on sapping our will as the VC did, and persuading America to choose to lose a war it could win.

    The difference between Tet and Samarra? We have a commander-in-chief who doesn’t stick his finger in the air to see which way the political winds are blowing today to formulate his strategy like Johnson did and the two Democrat presidents who followed. And there’s an alternative to the “Surrender now!” media.

    Gateway Pundit documents the first known mass outbreak of SRDS (Salman Rushdie Derangement Syndrome). I’m coming to the conclusion that these folks of the “religion of peace” aren’t as peaceful as they let on.

  • Hamas pulls out the plugs

    Fighting is raging across the Gaza strip today as Hamas decides it’s more fun to kill Palestinians than Israelis. the Washington Post reports;

    Palestinian hospital officials said at least 14 people were killed and 70 wounded in the hours-long fight for the Fatah-run Preventive Security headquarters in the center of Gaza City.

    Witnesses said Hamas fighters led Fatah officers from the building, some bound and dragged. Television reports from the scene showed groups of shirtless Fatah fighters being marched through the street.

    The best way to get your guys worked up into a fighting frenzy is to dehumanize the enemy;

    The Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades, the Hamas military wing that has begun referring to Fatah as the “Jew American Army,” has given the Fatah-dominated Palestinian National Forces across northern Gaza until Friday evening to surrender their weapons and turn over their posts.

    USAToday has an after-action report;

    A survivor of the Hamas assault said the Fatah forces were outgunned and that reinforcements never arrived. “We were pounded with mortar, mortar, mortar,” the Fatah fighter, who only gave his first name as Amjad, said excitedly and out of breath. “They had no mercy. It was boom, boom. They had rockets that could reach almost half of the compound.”

    No mercy. From UK’s Telegraph;

    “They’re firing at us, firing RPGs, firing mortars. We’re not Jews,” the brother of Jamal Abu Jediyan, a Fatah commander, pleaded during a live telephone conversation with a Palestinian radio station.

    Minutes later both men were dragged into the streets and riddled with bullets.

    These are the guys with whom we’re supposed to negotiate? They shoot their own neighbors in the street. How do we talk to them, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid? Maybe you two should go to to Gaza and talk to them.

  • Surrender Fever hits new high among Democrat “leadership”

    I learned about this from Crotchety Old Bastard to whom I’ve immediately shipped some of my blood pressure meds. 

    In a joint letter to the President, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi noted that, even though the final troops aren’t even deployed in Iraq yet, the surge is ineffectual. From AP;

    Top US congressional Democrats bluntly told President George W. Bush Wednesday that his Iraq troop “surge” policy was a failure.

    Senate Majority leader Harry Reid and House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi challenged the president over Iraq by sending him a letter, ahead of a White House meeting later on Wednesday.

    “As many had forseen, the escalation has failed to produce the intended results,” the two leaders wrote.

    “The increase in US forces has had little impact in curbing the violence or fostering political reconciliation.

    It has not enhanced Americas national security. The unsettling reality is that instances of violence against Iraqis remain high and attacks on US forces have increased.

    In fact, the last two months of the war were the deadliest to date for US troops.

    The letter appeared to preview a fresh showdown over Iraq between anti-war Democrats and the president, just a few weeks after Bush forced his foes to strip troop withdrawal timelines from a 100 billion dollar emergency war budget.

    It also came a few days after the US military mourned its 3,500th soldier killed in action in Iraq.

    “As predicted” they said. Isn’t that just childish and moronic. Before it’s begun, they’ve declared it a failure. Because the impatient crybaby hippies of the anti-war movement are disappointed. Apparently Harry’s “set the bar too high” explanation didn’t go over well with Code Pink.

    Meanwhile, AP also reports that the Senate will begin destroying more military officers’ careers for the Democrats’ own political benefit;

    On Friday, Defense Secretary Robert Gates made the stunning announcement that he would not recommend Pace to serve a second two-year term as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The Marine Corps four-star general had not been a target previously of Democrats’ ire on the war, but Gates said lawmakers made it clear the confirmation process would be ugly.

    “It would be a backward looking and very contentious process,” Gates said at a Pentagon news conference.

    […]

    “General Casey knows Iraq and the challenges the Army faces there,” Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said in February. “The principal failures that led to the chaos in Iraq were due to the civilian leaders.”

    But when it came to Pace, Levin signaled a new era in which uniformed officers close to the president would be held accountable.

    In an interview with reporters this week, Levin said Pace’s nomination would have been more contentious than other uniformed officers because he was the closest military adviser to the president on a failing war.

    Well, you know this is coming from the Code Pink/ANSWER bunch. Their most recent protests have deflated the egos of their members because, not only have they been poorly attended, but there have begun anti-anti-war protests which are increasing in numbers and strength. The anti-war movement is afraid that their decreasing popularity might make it into the media unless the politicians can win them some victories.

    And once Congress starts beating up the generals, it’ll be a signal to the Hippies-on-the-street to start mistreating the Joes and their families. I remember the playbook from the 60s, see.

    How do I know Code Pink and ANSWER are driving Reid and Pelosi? Well, there’s this in the Politico;

    Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid called Marine Gen. Peter Pace, the outgoing chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, “incompetent” during an interview Tuesday with a group of liberal bloggers, a comment that was never reported.

    Reid made similar disparaging remarks about Army Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, said several sources familiar with the interview.

    This is but the latest example of how Reid, under pressure from liberal activists to do more to stop the war, is going on the attack against President Bush and his military leaders in anticipation of a September showdown to end U.S. involvement in Iraq, according to Democratic senators and aides.

    Yep, cuz there was the blog interview with Think Progress (for some reason I can’t get to Think Progress’ website this morning, but if you can, check out the comments on the Reid interview) the other day and now this one. And we all know there are no moderates with blogs – on either side of the political spectrum. And what fuels the Left? Well, how about dumbass reports like this one from the Washington Post this morning;

    Three months into the new U.S. military strategy that has sent tens of thousands of additional troops into Iraq, overall levels of violence in the country have not decreased, as attacks have shifted away from Baghdad and Anbar, where American forces are concentrated, only to rise in most other provinces, according to a Pentagon report released yesterday.

    The report — the first comprehensive statistical overview of the new U.S. military strategy in Iraq — coincided with renewed fears of sectarian violence after the bombing yesterday of the same Shiite shrine north of Baghdad that was attacked in February 2006, unleashing a spiral of retaliatory bloodshed. Iraq’s government imposed an immediate curfew in Baghdad yesterday to prevent an outbreak of revenge killings.

    Yesterday’s attack adds to tensions faced by U.S. troops, who are paying a mounting price in casualties as they push into Iraqi neighborhoods, seeking to quell violence that the report said remains fundamentally driven by sectarianism.

    Iraq’s government, for its part, has proven “uneven” in delivering on its commitments under the strategy, the report said, stating that public pledges by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki have in many cases produced no concrete results.

    Now, there may be a point in pointing out Maliki’s failures, but the Post absolutely negates the war the US military has been waging against al Qaeda which has seen a steep rise in damage to al Qaeda in Iraq’s leadership – as pointed out nearly everyday by Blackfive and the other Milblogs. But I guess the Washington Post and the other hippies can’t be bothered to check out the truth.

    And of course the WaPo instantly translates “new fears of sectarian violence” into American casualties that haven’t happened yet. I guess they never figured I’d check another source and notice that the Wall Street Journal reports that the military suspects that al Qaeda were behind the attacks – which doesn’t support the Washington Post’s “fears of sectarian violence” claims;

    After yesterday’s destruction , several Iraqi police were detained, indicating the possibility of an inside job. The pattern of the attacks — both yesterday’s and last year’s — suggests that insurgents could have slipped past the security cordon to place their explosives. Top U.S. military and civilian officials in Iraq place the blame on al Qaeda, saying it was trying “to sow dissent and inflame sectarian strife.”

    Attacks by al Qaeda militants — including car bombs in crowded areas, destruction of bridges and a recent suicide bombing inside the Iraqi parliament — have become among the biggest challenges to the U.S.-led security plan.

    But it’s funny how the Washington Post suddenly decides the “surge” isn’t working on the same day Reid and Pelosi head to the White House, ain’t it?

    But, it’s nice know that the counter-protests are working. The Left is getting desperate and they need the war to end soon so they look like they have sway to their benefactors. That’s why Republicans in Congress need to hold their ground for a couple more rounds – the Left is in it’s death throes.

    Bloodthirsty Liberal wonders aloud how the Democrats felt about the increase in violence after the Normandy invasion. And Soldier’s Dad has some interesting charts related to the violence and Iraqi Security Force readiness. Bill Roggio has compiled more on the “minarets” attack.

    UPDATED: Hot Air discusses whether or not and whom Reid called “incompetent”.

  • Harry Reid; holding the President’s feet

    I guess Harry Reid awoke from his 20-year coma this week because I see his footprints all around the internet. He’s forgotten the drubbing he withstood just a month or so ago from the President and began his insane ramblings anew. Apparently, he’s pandering to his far-left pals, according to good, ole, Anne Flaherty of the AP;

    “We’re going to hold the president’s feet to the fire,” Reid, D-Nev., told reporters after emerging from a closed-door meeting with Senate Democrats.

    Under Reid’s plan, the Senate will cast separate votes on whether to cut off funding for combat next year, order troop withdrawals within four months, impose stricter standards on the length of combat tours and rescind congressional authorization for the Iraqi invasion.

    I don’t know exactly how falling on your sword for the empty-headed crybabies of the Left is holding the President’s feet to the fire.

     

    Michigan Democrat Carl Levin makes another baseless prediction;

    “I think the ground is going to continue to shift,” said Levin. “I think that by September, if not earlier, enough Republicans will be joining us to change course in Iraq. And if there’s enough Republicans joining us, the administration will see that handwriting on the wall.”

    “I think” and “if” are just empty qualifiers. All the Democrats are doing is holding off the inevitable defection from the Democrat party – they’re trying to convince the hardcore anti-war groups that they’re doing something. But I’m pretty sure that even with a few Republican defections from the RINO crowd, the Democrats don’t have the firepower – or the will power – to hold the President’s feet to anything.

    Of course it’s the Democrats’ own fault, completely. I don’t know how many times I’ve heard that the President is governing against the will of the People – that he’s not listening to us. That comes from this “mandate” the Democrats claim they have from the November election. There was no mandate – and they promised impeachment and big changes in direction of the war that they knew they couldn’t deliver. Now the crybabies in the anti-war movement are driving them over the edge.

    And Reid, for his part, admits that he deceived the Left;

    Reid spoke Tuesday on the phone with a group of liberal bloggers he acknowledged helped drive the anti-war debate.

    “I understand their disappointment,” Reid said. “We raised the bar too high.”

    Because you don’t have the mandate that you claim to have – you were successful in a few districts and States. Not so successful to have any real effect on the entire country. It’s just an exercise in fanning the anti-war Left’s ego to think they have a real impact on the Congress. The President is still in charge of the country.

  • Reid; Iran “invasion” would destabilize region

     

    Harry Reid in a blogged interview on Think Progress, in his infinite wisdom, and counting the times he’s been correct on any issue on one finger, determined that Joe Lieberman’s call for a strike against Iran would destabilize the region;

    “I know Joe feels strongly about that part of the world. I do too,” said Reid, rejecting Lieberman’s calls for ratcheting up tensions. “I believe our efforts should be diplomatic in nature,” Reid said, citing the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group and others to hold a regional conference to resolve security issues in the Middle East. Reid also noted that “we are so overextended” that the U.S. does not have the ground troops necessary for a war with Iran.

    “The invasion of [Iran] is only going to destabilize that part of the world more,” Reid charged. “I know Joe means well, but I don’t agree with him.”

    Well, Harry, Senator Lieberman recommended a retaliatory strike, not an invasion. And I don’t know how much more the region can be “destabilized” anyway. Turks are poised to attack the Kurda. Syria is gearing up for another Summer offensive against Israel for the Golan Heights, Iran is scooping up US citizens left and right knowing that you and Nancy Pelosi will throw yourselves in front of an airstrike against them.

    But, to your original statement, there’s a difference between what you’re saying and what Senator Lieberman said. According to Reuters, Lieberman said;

    Lieberman, appearing on CBS’ Sunday program “Face the Nation,” said the United States had “good evidence” that Iraqis were being trained to use the weapons at a camp inside Iran. He advocated a military strike in retaliation, saying much of the job could be done with air strikes.

    MSNBC also reported Lieberman’s statement;

    “I think we’ve got to be prepared to take aggressive military action against the Iranians to stop them from killing Americans in Iraq,” Lieberman said. “And to me, that would include a strike over the border into Iran, where we have good evidence that they have a base at which they are training these people coming back into Iraq to kill our soldiers.” 

    As compared to your false assumption that the strike aircraft will be carried into Iran on the backs of infantrymen. How much aircraft is being utilized in Iraq and Afghanistan as opposed to the number of aircraft currently floating off the coast of Iran? Why do you think the three carrier groups were deployed to the Gulf?

    Reid just won’t let go of the Iraq Study Group recommendation;

    So I would think rather than talking about military action against Iran, we should do what the Iraq Study Group said. Have a regional conference where we sit down and the president himself is personally involved with the leaders of Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and yes, Iran. That’s where our efforts have to be.

    Reid’s child-like innocence is stunning. I guess he hasn’t noticed that Iran won’t even own up to what they’re doing in Iraq and Afghanistan, so how do we sit down and talk to them? The only thing they understand is unrelenting force. According to CBS News;

    Iran on Monday [February 12, 2007] rejected U.S. accusations that the highest levels Iranian leadership has armed insurgents in Iraq with armor-piercing roadside bombs.

    “Such accusations cannot be relied upon or be presented as evidence. The United States has a long history in fabricating evidence. Such charges are unacceptable,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini told reporters.

    U.S. military officials in Baghdad on Sunday accused the Iranian leadership of arming Shiite militants in Iraq with the sophisticated bombs that have killed more than 170 troops from the American-led coalition.

    So while Harry is busy waving his current white flag, Iran has taken to threatening the US once again according to the Associated Press (On Fox News);

    Iran will make the United States “regret” its detention of five Iranian officials in Iraq, Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said Tuesday.

    Mottaki was referring to five Iranian officials detained in the northern Iraqi city of Irbil by U.S. troops in January, who still remain in U.S. custody. The U.S. military has said they are suspected of links to a network supplying arms to Iraqi insurgents — an accusation that Iran has denied.

    “We will make the Americans regret their ugly and illegal act,” Mottaki was quoted by the official IRNA news agency as saying. He didn’t elaborate on how Iran will make Washington regret the action.

    But ya see, the Iranians can just take hostages left and right, as reported by the Independent;

    Iran’s confirmation yesterday that it has detained a fourth Iranian-American – this one a peace activist from California – seems certain to further rile relations between the two countries, already tense over Iran’s nuclear program.

    The United States has sharply criticized the detentions but Iran insists America has no right to interfere.

    Mohammad Ali Hosseini, the spokesman for Iran’s foreign ministry, confirmed at his weekly news briefing that Iranian-American Ali Shakeri had been detained.

    And the reason they think they can away with that kind of behavior? Because they have Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi carrying their water for them in Congress; Iran’s own ready-made lobbying team that operates free-of-charge in the intrests of the mullahs.

    Gateway Pundit points and giggles at Harry Reid’s poll numbers (19% approval rating) – the same poll numbers that Reid used to deride Vice President Cheney a scant few months ago. I guess that since Reid has taken to surrendering to the nutroots as well as the jihadists (or apparently anyone who gives him a disapproving look), he’s just not liked by anyone anymore.

  • What the Hell is a bipartisan strategy for war?

    Just doing my daily perusal of the local newspapers, I ran across this beautiful headline in the Washington Examiner (in another Anne Flaherty AP story);

    GOP: Bush Should Adopt Bipartisan Plan

    Actually, Flaherty or her editor got the line from a Lamar Alexander quote;

    “The president needs bipartisan support if the United States is to sustain a long-term position in Iraq,” said Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn.

    Yep, he does. He needs to find both Democrats and Republicans that support our strategy in Iraq. But, of course that’s not what Alexander (or the AP) is talking about.

    The message that must be sent to the president is, “Let’s see if we can agree on an entire approach so you can have the kind of support you need,” he said.

    Alexander and Sen. Ken Salazar, D-Colo., introduced legislation that would make most of the [Iraq Study Group’s] 79 recommendations official U.S. policy. At least six other senators, including three Republicans, signed on as co-sponsors.

    So the same people that gave us airbag legislation that was rushed into a mandatory-use law which started killing small children want to legislate a strategy for war.  The same people who mandated low-flow toilets, the people responsible for the administration of Washington, DC. The people who thought that midnight basketball would solve our inner-city ills.

    Never in our history have we had a legislative body who thought they were tacticians – and with good reason. You can’t fight a war by committee. Our strategy in Viet Nam was developed by political committee – see how well that one turned out?

    There’s a story in Tzun Tzu that I call the concubine story and I’ll try to relate it here in my own humble words;

    Tzun Tzu offered his services to a local warlord to train the warlord’s army to battle another warlord. The warlord told him, “OK, but to show me know what you’re doing first train my stable of concubines to be soldiers. If you can make warriors of them, you can make warriors of anyone – and you’ll get the job.”

    Tzun Tzu agreed and immediately went to work. With the warlord watching, Tzun Tzu started training the concubines in front of the palace. Well, the warlord’s favorite concubine wasn’t too interested in the training and was a smart-ass and only half-assed went through the drills, knowing that the warlord would protect her from tzun Tzu’s wrath.

    Well, after a couple of hours of putting up with this particular concubine’s antics, Tzun Tzu walked up to her in the middle of the formation and chopped her head off. Well, the warlord went supersonic and angrily confronted his new employee about killing his favorite concubine.

    Tzun Tzu replied that the warlord had told him to train the concubines, it was not the warlord’s place to comment or tell Tzun Tzu how to train or or how to deploy the concubines in war. The lesson was that politicians provide the military with the assets to train and fight the army, that it wasn’t politicians’ place to tell the army how to train or how to fight. The same lesson is repeated throughout history, it’s repeated in Clauswitz’ “On War”, the comparison of Viet Nam and Desert Storm was supposed to drive the point home – but apparently the lessons of history are lost on some politicians.

    Alexander and those other three Republicans need to wake up to the realization that no matter how the President handles this war, the Democrats are going to complain and criticize. Why Alexander thinks he can get bipartisan support for anything this administration does is beyond reason – has he been asleep since Novemeber 2000?

    He is right that the President needs the Democrats’ support, but it’s up to the Democrats to cross the aisle and accept the current strategy, then sit down, shut up and let our military finish wiping the floor with al Qaida, et al.

  • Washington Post: Americans dissatisfied with country’s direction

    Today’s Washington Post analyzes it’s latest poll on Americans’ perception of the direction of the country. Of course, by direction of the country, the Washington Post means what Joe Sixpack thinks our strategy in Iraq should be;

    Growing frustration with the performance of the Democratic Congress combined with widespread public pessimism over President Bush’s temporary troop buildup in Iraq has left satisfaction with the overall direction of the country at its lowest point in more than a decade, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

    Almost six in 10 Americans said they do not think the additional troops sent to Iraq since the beginning of the year will help restore civil order in that country, and 53 percent — a new high in Post-ABC News polls — said they do not believe the Iraq war has contributed to the long-term security of the United States.

    Of course, this decision is asked from the public an entire weekend after US forces arrived in theater to complete the “surge” as reported in the World Tribune Friday;

    The U.S. military has completed its troop surge for the new counter-insurgency strategy in Iraq.

    Officials said the fifth and final brigade of the troop surge has arrived in Baghdad. They said the brigade would be fully operational by mid-July for the counter-insurgency mission in the Iraqi capital.

    “We are starting to see a shift in momentum that comes with having additional forces on the ground,” Brig. Gen. Perry Wiggins, deputy operations director at the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said according to Middle East Newsline.

    So, since all of the troops have arrived in Baghdad, the Post expects an immediate improvement in operations in Baghdad that would be reflected in an opinion poll from a public that has listened to the media call iraq a quagmire since the first sandstorm on the second day of operations there. I wonder if the Post thought aboout running a story like this one from the Boston Globe;

    US troops battled Al Qaeda in west Baghdad yesterday after Sunni residents challenged the militants and called for American help to end furious gunfire that kept students from final exams and forced people in the neighborhood to huddle indoors.

    Backed by helicopter gunships, American forces joined the two-day battle in the Amariyah district, according to a councilman and other residents of the Sunni district.

    The fight reflects a trend that US and Iraqi officials have been trumpeting recently to the west in Anbar province, once considered the headquarters of the Sunni insurgency. Many Sunni tribes in the province have banded together to fight Al Qaeda, asserting the terrorist group is more dangerous than American forces.

    Lieutenant Colonel Dale C. Kuehl, commander of First Battalion, Fifth Cavalry Regiment, who is responsible for the Amariyah area of the capital, confirmed the US military’s role in the fighting. He said the battles raged Wednesday and yesterday but died off at night.

    Although Al Qaeda is a Sunni organization opposed to the Shi’ite-dominated government, its ruthlessness and reliance on foreign fighters have alienated many Sunnis in Iraq.

    Maybe if the Post took a moment and wrote about the real results of the surge, they wouldn’t have to bother reporting on lowered morale in the country. If they’d join the fight against Islamofacists instead of enabling and enboldening them, we wouldn’t need their stupid polls and their stupid advice what to do after the surge.