Un-American Activities

Talk show host Hugh Hewitt, today: "Now yesterday, Harry Reid said on the floor of the Senate that the surge has failed. Do you think there’s any factual basis for making that assertion, Michael Yon, from what you’ve seen in Iraq over the last many months?".

Famed War correspondent Michael Yon: "He’s wrong, he’s wrong. It has absolutely not failed, and in fact, I’m finally willing to say it in public. I feel like it’s starting to succeed."

This morning, I listened to President Bush's press conference on the interim report on progress in Iraq. As usual, his delivery was hamfisted, his phrasing anything but inspiring,but ( at long last) he made a couple of things clear...that this was an interim report, issued at the insistence of Congree just a couple of weeks after General Petraeus got the full compliment of troops he asked for, that there was major progress on the ground in provinces like Anbar and Diwali that were formerly thought of as lost to al-Qaeda...that there was political progress is some areas but not in others, and that he intended to wait until General Petraeus and Ambassador crocker made their reports in September before deciding on strategy.

What was the Democrat controlled House's response? Yet another party line vote, 223-201 to begin withdrawing our troops within 120 days.

The dinosaur media and the Democrat controlled congress appear to be in a race to see who can engineer a defeat for the US quicker.

"It is time for the president to listen to the American people and do what is necessary to protect this nation. That means admitting his Iraq policy has failed, working with the Democrats and Republicans in Congress on crafting a new way forward in Iraq and refocusing our collective efforts on defeating al-Qaida," said Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.

According to Senator Biden, who recently referred to President Bush as `brain-dead' called the report “a devastating indictment of this administration’s failure to accomplish its most important mission: destroying al Qaeda and the threat it poses.” he called on the country to end the war in Iraq and “refocus the energy, ingenuity and resources of this country on defeating al Qaeda once and for all.”

Barack Obama likewise weighed in saying we need to start focusing on the Al Qaeda. "We've got real enemies out there that we've got to fight. And the problem is that this has been an enormous distraction from a war that needs to be waged."

John Edwards also put his two cents in: "The president's remarks today defending his Iraq policy without regard to actual facts border on the delusional. The president claimed that the same people attacking U.S. troops today are the ones who perpetrated 9/11. It must be nice to live in a world where your actions have no consequences."

Senator Clinton responded by describing the White House report as “the latest attempt by the Bush administration to put the best face on a failed strategy.”

“Even the president’s own portrait cannot paint over the reality on the ground: our strategy in Iraq is failing. . . . It remains abundantly clear that we need to change course in Iraq, end the escalation, apply political pressure to the Iraqis and pursue an aggressive diplomatic strategy in the region, and bring our troops home,”"It remains abundantly clear that we need to change course in Iraq, end the escalation, apply political pressure to the Iraqis and pursue an aggressive diplomatic strategy in the region, and bring our troops home."

None of them, of course, go into any details on how an immediate pull out of our troops is going to `make America safer.'

Now, as far as I'm concerned,anyone who thinks that we're merely `fighting al-Qaeda and that this is not a wider conflict simply isn't paying attention. But having said that, if these people are so convinced of the need to concentrate on `fighting al-Qaeda', just whom do they think we're taking out in places like Bekuba?

Now, let's look at some of the best bits of an interview done today with renowned war correspondant Michael Yon who's there on the ground...and who's stories about al-Qaeda's atrocities in Iraq and the military progress we've made there are ignored by the dinosaur media like the plague:

HH: I’m joined now by satellite phone from Baghdad by intrepid reporter Michael Yon. He’s actually in Baquba. Michael, welcome back to the Hugh Hewitt Show, always a pleasure to speak with you. How goes the fighting on the ground?


MY: Well, it’s really slowed down here in Baquba, Hugh. I was just in the TOC or the headquarters about fifteen minutes ago before I came on the show, and they were like the Maytag repairmen here. I mean, Baquba has just…you know, it was a very serious fight when it started, Operation Arrowhead Ripper on the 19th of June, I came in with them, but it quickly abated. The people have just turned against al Qaeda here. ....There’s still some combat to do, but not a lot, actually, because like I said, you know, the people just turned against al Qaeda.


HH: Now Michael Yon, a lot of people don’t know the significance of Baquba. And so can you explain what peace in Baquba means for the larger war effort?


MY: Well, it’s huge, because al Qaeda had claimed Baquba as their capitol, their worldwide capitol. And you might recall one of the things that kind of upsets people about my reporting is I said Iraq was in a civil war, and I said that way back in February of 2005, and I continue to do so. But when I first wrote that, I was in Baquba, in 2005, and I spent two or three months here. And it was just total…you could see it, and you could see al Qaeda was trying to foment that civil war, because that’s their underlying strategy, is to do that. And so getting, fracturing al Qaeda here, and al Qaeda alienating so many Iraqis, it’s helping us to put a damper on the civil war.


HH: Now yesterday, Harry Reid said on the floor of the Senate that the surge has failed. Do you think there’s any factual basis for making that assertion, Michael Yon, from what you’ve seen in Iraq over the last many months?


MY: He’s wrong, he’s wrong. It has absolutely not failed, and in fact, I’m finally willing to say it in public. I feel like it’s starting to succeed. And you know, I’m kind of stretching a little bit, because we haven’t gone too far into it, but I can see it from my travels around, for instance, in Anbar and out here in Diyala Province as well. Baghdad’s still very problematic. But there’s other areas where you can clearly see that there is a positive effect. And the first and foremost thing we have to do is knock down al Qaeda. And with them alienating so many Iraqis, I mean, they’re almost doing it for us. I mean, yeah, it takes military might to finally like wipe them out of Baquba, but it’s working. I mean, I sense that the surge is working. Reid is just wrong.


HH: Yesterday, on CNN, Senator Joe Lieberman said we’ve got the enemy, al Qaeda, on the run. We’ve chased them out of Anbar Province. We’ve chased them now to Diyala. All of this is possible because of the surge. And then Michael Ware, whom I know you respect for his courage, went on with Anderson Cooper and said that I’m afraid that Senator Lieberman has taken an excursion into fantasy. Who’s telling the truth here, Michael Yon?


MY: Well, you know, al Qaeda’s not been wiped out of Iraq by any means, and there’s still some serious fighting to do. But what we have seen is if you give al Qaeda time, they will alienate the local population for us. So I mean, they almost prep it for us to get rid of them. You know, a lot of them that were not killed or captured here in Baquba in the last three weeks did move out to other places. So they’re not gone. I mean, so there’s some truth to what Mick Ware says. However, there are fewer and fewer hiding places for them to go. They can’t go to the south in Basra. They’re not welcome there. They can’t, there’s only a few places they can go to in Anbar, and those are drying up. There’s fewer places in Diyala, and what is left is drying up. They certainly cannot go to the Kurdish regions, because they will be killed. So they can still go to Nineveh, but the ISF in Nineveh is up where Mosul is the capitol. They can go up there, but the ISF, or the Iraqi Security Forces up there are pretty well advanced, and they can hold their own now, and I saw them doing it again earlier this year when I was back in Nineveh {....} I’ve seen tremendous progress in different parts of Iraq, but this is not going to be solved in six months or a year {....} if you’ve been here long enough, you can see that progress is being made.

{...}

HH: Now Michael Yon, what about the Baghdad situation? You recounted the successes in Diyala and Anbar, and in the south. What is your assessment of the situation in Baghdad? Is it getting better? Is the same? Or is it getting worse?


MY: Well, you know, I’ve been out of Baghdad for about a month, now, because I’ve been in Baquba. But to improve the situation in Baghdad, you have to improve the situation around Baghdad, because many of the attacks that are being launched in there are actually being prepared out here in these car bomb factories and what not. And so it’s these outlying areas which al Qaeda has been using to help foment the civil war. So if you want to see improvement in Baghdad, we need to secure places like Baquba, which Baquba is now secure.

Regular members of Joshua's Army know two things..first, that I've been highly critical of the Bush Administration`s mismanagement of our war effort for some time, and second,that I loathe the current state of what passes for political dialoge and I normally attempt to maintain a civil tone on this site, as long as it's reciprocated.

But when I see members of congress, who've taken an oath to protect and defend our Republic working like rats in heat to engineer an American defeat for partisan political purposes, I have to label the actions of these pimp weasels as exactly what they are..un-American activities.

I take no joy in saying that. It's not pleasant to think that some of our leadership in Washington give winning an election and taking power a higher priority over losing a war.

I don't think much of Bush as a war president..but at least I give him credit for being unwilling to undermine a commander in the midst of field operations who's strategy and appointment was confirmed 83-0 by the Senate. Congress pledged to reassess the situation in Iraq in September...but instead, they are doing their very best to sabotage General Petraeus' efforts beforehand and make his failure a self-fulfilling prophecy. The members of the House and their allies in the Senate who have allowed themselves to jump onto this particular garbage truck lack even the most basic sense of honor and truthfulness.

Unlike many icons of the Democrat Party, I don't accept the premise that we're only fighting al-Qaeda.I see the war we're engaged in as a much wider conflict, and our failure to act on that as a major flaw inour strategy. But it is the most amazing thing to listen to Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Joe Biden talk about how the Iraq War is `taking the emphasis off fighting al-Qaeda' when that's exactly whom we're destroying in Iraq...and to watch the Dinosaur Media except this nonsensical drivel without criticism.

If these people actually think that legislating a retreat from our enemies by a set date will not undermine our war efforts, they are even less cognizant than I give them credit for.