The SUN is reporting that America has lost its first female soldier, West Virginian Jessica Lynch.
*** Update ***
The military reports that she is MIA, so, as several commenters noted, it is too early to give up hope. Pray she makes it home.
Archives for 2003
The War Is Lost…
according to the left, Scott Ritter, and the Jordan Times– the cartoon I posted here is an accurate portrayal of the media disinformation campaign mounted by the opponents of the war. I am surprised all of our troops have not thrown down their weapons and run from the battlefield, since they “are achieving small victories at a very high price”
and they are “now seen by ordinary Iraqis as having made victims of those they say they want to liberate.” See for your self- the Iraqis are clearly terrified:
Private First Class Joseph DeWitt, 26, from Suffolk County, N.Y., carries a young Iraqi boy who was injured during a heavy battle between the U.S. Army’s 7th Cavalry Regiment and Iraqi forces Tuesday near the village of Al Faysaliyah, Iraq.
An Iraqi child gestures to an American as other children look on, at a water distribution point in Umm Qasr, Iraq, Wednesday.
Except all of this is nonsense. No one thought this war would be over in 5 days. No one thought that there would be no casualties. No one knows what is going to happen in the next week. What we do know is what we have seen on the ground, and that seems to be that we have blanketed the majority of the nation with coalition troops, with little or no opposition.
There are sporadic engagements and harassment from militia, but there has yet to be a single large-scale battle. Before someone protests that if it is going so well, why the casualties- count the casualties, and then count how many have been killed by accidents, a wrong turn, and Iraqi execution of surrrendering soldiers (and this is in no way intended to diminish the sacrifice of those brave men). Some degree of realism is required when evaluating the progress of the war. Coalition warplanes are enjoying a shooting gallery in their kill boxes, and the Brits are essentially engaging in target practice in southern Iraq. Yes there has been resistance, and yes, this is going to get tougher, and yes, at points the resistance has been tougher than expected, but by no stretch of the imagination are we losing. By no stretch of the imagination are we (qualitatively) outmanned, out-equipped, or out-prepared. Yes, the civilian population of Iraq has been slow to fight back at the numerous Hussein lyalists wreaking havoc in the southern cities, continuing to oppress the people. Stories like this may explain why:
The Marine general said that what has surprised him most about the first week of fighting is the extent of war crimes carried out by the Iraqi regime. In addition to the execution of POWs, he said, Iraqis have used civilians as human shields, stored weapons in schools, set up command posts in hospitals and pretended to surrender only to open fire.
In one case, an Iraqi woman was hanged after she waved to coalition forces, Pace said.
“I’ve never seen anything like this,” he said. “To do it so blatantly so early, not only is it a surprise, but to me it’s disgusting.”
And it is intentional, and it is an attempt to keep control. They are suppressing the population with fear- they are going to have to be confident we are coming to their rescue this time- we let them down once before. But fine, you don’t trust me- how about our troops on the ground- everyone supports our troops, even when they don’t. Listen to their interviews on CNN and MSNBC.
This story may also help to explain Iraqi hesitation:
The last time the colonel saw Baghdad in flames and American tanks rolling across the southern Iraqi desert, he was sure Saddam Hussein’s time had come. Feeling that the hated regime was crumbling and encouraged by Washington to rise up, he picked up his Kalashnikov and went into the streets of Baghdad to help make it happen.
Twelve years later, as he flicks through TV channels at a friend’s house, the former Iraqi army colonel is seeing the same panorama again. But he also remembers what followed the 1991 uprising:
Washington’s sudden cease-fire and the regime’s bloody crackdown on the rebels. Sharing a prison cell with rats for a year. The face of his beautiful wife when she told him that the government had forced her to file for divorce. Getting the confiscation papers for his house in the northern city of Mosul. Being kicked out of Iraq into the semi-autonomous Kurdish area of Iraq. (Hat Tip: The Command Post).
The intent of this is not to persuade you that this is going to be easy. It isn’t. But you have to recognize that there are a signficant number of people who have a vested interest in calling this war a failure, no matter how successful it is. I’ll let you figure out who they are- but it is clear, every time they open their mouths. To many of the sewer trout out there, this war is nothing more than aplatform to re-fight the 2000 election and to set the stage for 2004. This is not about WMD to them. This is not about liberating Iraq. This is about their visceral hatred and mistrust of ‘Shrub’ and ‘Rummy’ and the ‘neo-con cabal.’ Remember that, please.
The Media and The Military
This about sums up the war so far, via RealPolitik’s morning cartoon collection:
This Is A Tragedy
From the NY Times:
Former Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a New York City shoe shine boy who became an iconoclastic scholar-politician and served four terms in the Senate, died Wednesday. He was 76.
The New York Democrat and former U.N. ambassador had been in ill health. He was hospitalized in January for an intestinal disorder, and again soon after for a back injury. His latest setback was an infection after an emergency appendectomy on March 11 at the Washington Hospital Center.
Sen. Moynihan was a decent, honorable man who thought before he spoke, said what he thought, and meant what he said. He will be sorely missed.
Message From Dad
I was just watching MSNBC interview the parents of POW Jessica Lynch, a native West Virginian, and something her dad said made me very proud to be a Mountaineer. When asked if he had any messages for his daughter, he stated:
“Keep being tough.”
*** Update ***
This was not Jessica’s parents who said that. I still like the message, and I will try to find out whose father said this.
All The News That is Fit To Spin
Check out the latest NYT/CBS Poll regarding the war in Iraq. Here are two graphics from the CBS website that I thought you might find interesting.
Notice anything weird? Look again. Notice anything funny in the graph in the second image? The size of the bar for 63% compared to the size of the bar for 66%?
Yep- typical for the NY Times, typical for the Dan Rather crowd. When the numbers don’t go your way- just make it look like they are going your way. We know you don’t want this war guys (not that anyone really does), but try to shoot straight with us. Pretty Please?
Lazy, incompetent hacks. They really do think no one is paying attention. And before 9 million people write to say this is not bias, I will agree with you it may not be intentional bias- but it is most certainly misleading and biased- and why does it never happen in the other direction? How many coincidences like this do we have to point out before people will finally question whether there may be an agenda?
While you are at it, go check out the NYT Op-Ed about the poll numbers:
While 82 percent of whites said the United States should take military action to oust Mr. Hussein, just 44 percent of blacks said they supported that approach. In addition, 71 percent of whites said they were proud of what the United States was doing in Iraq, compared with 33 percent of blacks.
We were that close to the fabled “World Ending Tomorrow- Minorities and Women Hit Hardest”
*** Update ***
According to Mike at Cold Fury, the website has made the correction, and didn’t bother to tell anyone or explain why it had been wrong in the first place.
Just Out of Curiosity…
Am I the only one who finds it moderately amusing that the most partisan of Democrat webloggers are claiming a major victory when only half of the President’s tax cut passes the Senate ($350 billion over 10 years). My, how the landscape has changed. Yes guys,- half a tax cut is quite a spanking. A Whopping defeat. Snicker.
Now if you damned Republicans would cut spending.