From his report at Pajamas Media:
On November 13 I covered a mission in South Baghdad with soldiers from the 4th Infantry Division. General Petraeus once told me during the height of the fighting, back when violence was the lingua franca and victory was very much in question, that this area was the canary in the mineshaft. In his exact words regarding what Lieutenant Colonel Pat Frank had to deal with in one of the toughest places in Iraq, “SW Baghdad … has every challenge imaginable — AQI, JAM, micro fault lines, good/bad ISF partners, good/bad neighborhood leaders, and Route Irish! It will be the canary in the mineshaft; if they can pull it off, this will be doable.”
It is critical to point out that General Petraeus told me this in 2007 — just at the crest of the surge during some of the fiercest fighting in the war. Many people at home were saying the new strategy was a complete failure, but the coalition and Iraqi soldiers were not tapping out, not taking a break, giving no quarter to the enemy, and expecting none in return.
General Petraeus went on about what he was seeing: “Just back from a patrol base in Arab Jabour, SE of Baghdad, another incredible place. Was an AQI sanctuary three weeks ago. Now the head sheik has given four of his best men to the newly arrived Bn Cdr to help him find/kill/capture AQI in the AO. Very impressive/heartening.”
I’ll finish this story where General Petraeus could not, because this was still at the height of combat; the war truly had just peaked and nobody knew this yet.
……Last week, in this November of 2008, I was in a Humvee with a fine group of men, including: SGT Jason McInerney from Connecticut, who is on his second Iraq tour; Specialist Jason Cooper, a medic on his second Iraq tour hailing from “Central Texas”; and Specialist Mack Pinson from Lincoln Park, Michigan. Mack is on his first tour.
Sometimes folks get upset when these pages don’t mention the exact unit, but there is a reason for the shorthand: many readers are international or have little knowledge of the military……Since readers from dozens of countries visit this site each day — and I thank you for that! — I try to keep it straightforward. But out of respect for the Soldiers, here goes the unit name: this mission was with Troop C, 7th Squadron, 10th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division, Multi-National Division Baghdad. (US ARMY)
……Today’s mission — observing the progress of the peace — makes for boring journalism, but it made me very happy. I was smiling all day. This victory, like all real triumphs, is monumental and historic — though our military will not be allowed to express their feelings of pride and sense of well-earned glory.
When the war was on full-steam there was so much to report that it was impossible to keep track. And now that peace is breaking out, it’s equally impossible to keep track of all the progress. There’s still focus on the attacks, most of which are directed against Iraqis, not us. And so this “mission” was more like an armed errand to remove some concrete barriers between neighborhoods.
Read the entire great article here:
http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/down-with-barriers-up-with-iraq/
Now that victory has been achieved in Iraq, the leftwing shitbirds in the Congress and Senate are strangely silent. They’ve found so much to worship in their newly elected Messiah that anything previous will be considered “B.C.”.
Watch Obama try to claim credit for everything we’ve done in Iraq and are doing in Afghanistan.
Just wait until the leftwingnut turd suckers in the media who tried everything in their power to derail the war on Islamofascism, and who saw fit to bad mouth those fighting it, now declare that it’s okay to support everything because Jesus is in the White House.
Matter of fact some of them are already singing the gospel according to the enlightened:
U.S. troops have been instrumental in weakening insurgents, and the latest attacks appeared to bolster the Iraqi government’s claim that a hasty American departure could undermine the relative stability that many parts of Iraq have enjoyed since 2007. That argument is key to efforts by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to win parliament’s broad approval for the U.S.-Iraqi pact.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hwK_CSpBxsNuVUEaDuOwmSSCiqGwD94LI3F80
Suddenly gone are the gloom and doom forecasts and daily enemy propaganda in the form of American body counts (not the thousands of dead terrorists, mind you), the ‘resilient insurgents’, and the pronouncements of an “unpopular war”. It’s as unpopular with the Taliban and Al Qaeda as it was with the AP and the New York Times.
The Democratic government majority has the next four years to either bring Afghanistan to a successful conclusion, or fuck that up the way they would Iraq had they the chance.
Stay tuned.