Michael Totten is embedded in Baghdad with the 82nd Airborne with whom he recently went on patrol.
The battalion I’m embedded with here in Baghdad hasn’t suffered a single casualty – not even one soldier wounded – since they arrived in the Red Zone in January. The surge in this part of the city could not possibly be going better than it already is. Most of Graya’at’s insurgents and terrorists who haven’t yet fled are either captured, dormant, or dead....
Before the surge started the neighborhood was much more dangerous than it is now.
“We were on base at Camp Taji [north of the city] and commuting to work,” Major Jazdyk told me earlier. “The problem with that was that the only space we dominated was inside our Humvees. So we moved into the neighborhoods and live there now with the locals. We know them and they know us.”
Lieutenant Lawrence Pitts from Fayetteville, North Carolina, elaborated. “We patrol the streets of this neighborhood 24/7,” he said. “We knock on doors, ask people what they need help with. We really do what we can to help them out. We let them know that we’re here to work with them to make their city safe in the hopes that they’ll give us the intel we need on the bad guys. And it worked.”
Congressman Kevin Brady of Texas recently visited Iraq and reported to Congress
Mr. Speaker, traveling to Iraq this past weekend to see firsthand how the surge is working, I really expected the worst. Instead I am very encouraged. Communities all across Iraq are turning against al Qaeda and working with Iraqi and coalition forces to take back their cities. Half of Baghdad is no longer safe for insurgents. Al Qaeda is not down and out but clearly back on its heels rejected by the very communities and religious leaders its claims to fight for. Make no mistake, there are still serious challenges, including high profile bombings, the need for Iraq ’s government to resolve key issues now, and Iran ’s continued support for terrorism. I’m convinced the new strategy is working and we have impressive leaders and impressive troops in place to see even more progress. Mr. Speaker, while congress has the right to debate this war, it has the responsibility to help win it as well. That means letting this new strategy work to the end of the year or the beginning of the next if we are truly serious about a stable Iraq and safer America.
Clearly success spells danger for Democrats. Because they tried but can't get a defeat amendment passed, Democrats are holding up considering the the Defense Appropriations, like they attempted with the War Supplemental, and instead are going to demand reports from the Pentagon about their favorite subject
“The need for the committee to know the status of Department of Defense redeployment planning is clear, yet past efforts by individual members to obtain this information were rebuffed,” the four senators [Robert Byrd of West Virginia, Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, Evan Bayh of Indiana and Jim Webb of Virginia] say in their letter.
Um, forgive me for pointing out the obvious, but there are no plans for redeployment. The Democratic leadership lost that vote.
How about getting behind providing political and economic freedom to the people of Iraq, rather then devising ways to allow them to be enslaved by Islamists?
