The offensive in Iraq continues..

It irritates me ( to put it mildly) that the dinosaur media is totally ignoring how well the offensive in Iraq is going. About all we ever see from them is casualty lists announcing American dead, and frankly that is a disservice, as far as I'm concerned, to the brave men and women who are accomplishing an amazing feat of arms under incredibly difficult conditions.

In the so-called Baghdad Belts, in the north, in Baqubah, in Mosul, in Diyala and in Baghdad itself US and Iraqi forces are making major progress. Al-Qaeda jihadis are being captured and killed, weapons caches discovered and IED factories destroyed. Upwards of 60 percent of Baquba city is now under Iraqi and Coalition control, with portions of the western section of the city still need to be cleaned out.

In the north, our guys took out the al-Qaeda's so-called `emir' of western Mosul, Khalid Sultan Khulayf Shakir al-Badrani, also known as Abu Abdullah. Abu Abdullah was an old hand at this business, who was in charge of operations resulting in kidnappings, extortion, assassinations, homicide bombings and attacks on US troops. U.S. and Iraqi forces also uncovered and dismantled an IED factory in Mosul after it was ratted out by some of the locals...most likely for a little baksheesh.

Meanwhile, in and around Baghdad, the raids continue, focusing on cleaning out the al-Qaeda network in central Iraq.Forty-three al-Qaeda jihadis were captured during today's raids, and an undetermined number killed. Our troops are now focusing on clearing out the Rashid district in Baghdad, historically a major trouble spot.

Al-Qaeda isn't taking this pressure lying down. Today, they hit back with five coordinated suicide attacks in Baghdad, Babil and in northern Iraq, which ended up resulting in about 45 deaths. The biggest an dmost deadly one was directed against members of the Anbar Salvation Council who were meeting in Baghdad at the Mansour Hotel.

The Anbar Salvation Council consists of the leaders of Sunni tribes in Anbar who have been fighting with the US against al-Qaeda. Four tribal shieks were killed, including former Anbar governor Fassal al-Guood, sheik of the al-Bu Nimir tribe, Sheik Abdul-Azizi al-Fahdawi of the Fahad tribe, Sheik Tariq Saleh al-Assafi and Col. Fadil al-Nimrawi, both of the al-Bu Nimr tribe.

Unfortunately, the fact that al-Qaeda was able to penetrate security and pull of this attack in the middle of Baghdad shows that there is still plenty of work to be done...but this bombing, launched against a relatively `soft' target shows that al-Qaeda is also feeling major pain and that our offensive is having a definite effect.