Tools

Lorie Byrd takes a look at al Qaeda in Iraq's manipulation of the media and notes:

News of even significant progress in any region of Iraq can be silenced with one strategically placed bomb or beheading. Unfortunately, media manipulation is one aspect of the war the terrorists appear to have mastered.

My opinion on Iraq remains the same: We only lose if we in the US give up or if the Iraqi government fails to come together and agree on the major outstanding political issues among the factions. The former seems more and more likely to me as nearly the entire Democratic party is now heavily invested in Iraq as a failure. They can take that position because most of the American people feel much the same way I think. And I think that's because what Lorie Byrd has concluded is true. Horrific single events and the daily drip, drip, drip of casualties are not balanced out by the media in any meaningful way and knowingly or not, much of the media is playing the enemy's game. She quotes Bill Roggio in her piece:

He cited the way a suicide attack in the Anbar province was reported as an example. “U.S. success in Anbar was immediately negated when al Qaeda conducted a suicide attack in Ramadi in early May, and The Associated Press ‘reported’ that the attack dealt ‘a blow to recent U.S. success in reclaiming the Sunni city from insurgents.’ Al Qaeda conducted the attack to generate such an opening paragraph.”

Mission accomplished.

In a related matter, I had no sooner read that article this morning when I came across this report by AP's Ravi Nessman on Sadr's return to Najaf. Note this little rewriting of history:

Al-Sadr's Mahdi Army fought U.S. troops to a virtual standstill in 2004, but to avoid renewed confrontation he ordered his militants off the streets when the U.S. began its security crackdown in the Baghdad area 14 weeks.

Really? They "fought U.S. troops to a virtual standstill in 2004"? Because you know, that's not how I remember it. I remember that the Mahdi Army got it's collective ass handed to itself and was saved only at the intercession of one Ayatollah Sistani. Hmmm, that's the way the Washington Post saw it almost three years ago also:

Moqtada Sadr, the firebrand young Shiite cleric whose militia had seized control of Najaf's revered mosque, sought to derail the process. He led an uprising that at one time seemed to be gaining strength through much of Iraq's southern Shiite heartland, and his goals, while never entirely clear, certainly did not include multi-ethnic democracy or a U.S. presence in Iraq. U.S. Marines and soldiers, fighting alongside a small and untested Iraqi force, performed bravely for the past several weeks, inflicting substantial losses on the Sadr forces while taking care not to damage the mosque. If the respected Shiite Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani had not intervened, U.S. forces were prepared in the next few days to force a final battle, with Iraqi troops assigned to reclaim the mosque itself. Instead, Mr. Sadr was permitted to go free in exchange for vacating the mosque and ordering his militia to lay down their arms.

Is this a defeat for the government? Mr. Sadr is a murderous outlaw, and Iraq would be better off without him. But it's not certain that Iraqi forces could have prevailed in a final battle, at least not without harming the sacred shrine in a way that would have redounded against U.S. forces and the Iraqi government. Now the shrine has been reopened, thanks to the intervention of Mr. Sistani, who worked in cooperation with the Allawi government and who supports the same democratization schedule as Mr. Allawi and the international coalition. Mr. Sadr cannot be trusted to honor any agreement, but he has failed for a second time to derail the process.

In other words, restraint and respect for the holy site these cowards took refuge in were the real reason they survived. Fought to a standstill my ass.

Tell me again about all those damned editors.