You won't find this in the NYTimes, but in Karmah, Iraq our soldiers are adored by school children as if they were rock stars. God bless Michael Totten for getting the truth out. The Liberation of Karmah, Part II KARMAH, IRAQ — The small city of Karmah sits between Fallujah and Baghdad, two Iraqi cities that have suffered more insurgent and terrorist violence than most. Karmah, however, was more hard-hit than either. It’s right on the bleeding edge of Anbar Province where the outskirts of Baghdad taper away. Unlike Fallujah, it has no hard perimeter to defend, nor was it considered a top priority for counterinsurgency operations. Surge forces in Baghdad drove Al Qaeda ...

Yesterday Dith Pran, survivor of the killing fields of Cambodia, died at 65. He is pictured here in 1989 during a return trip to Cambodia where he saw the remains of some of the Khmer Rouge's victims. This picture, and Mr. Pran's personal story, shows what happens when Good withdraws from battling Evil. If we leave Iraq too soon, al Qaeda will re-emerge and there will be more killing fields: Iraq: Al-Qaeda Killing Field Found Near Farming Village ZAHAMM, IRAQ -- Villagers digging in an abandoned pomegranate orchard in the Diyala River Valley have unearthed the remains of at least 52 people murdered by Al-Qaeda in Iraq during ...

Amy Proctor has a great video up on CNN correspondent Michael Ware commenting on what is happening in Basra. MICHAEL WARE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Wolf, what’s going on is the future of Iraq without U.S. forces, welcome to it. You think Lebanon in the ’80s was bad? Many people say that the future of Iraq with a timetable for withdrawal will be exactly what you’re seeing now. We’re seeing Iranian backed Shia faction fighting Iranian backed Shia faction. But put it this way, Wolf, Americans are still in South Korea. Now if you think American troops can withdraw next year, then someone is being delusional. Now, the Brits in the south of Iraq who technically once owned Basra have now retreated to the ...

After ignoring Iraq for months (when things were going well), the Mainstream Media returned to reporting on Iraq with a vengeance when it appeared that things weren't going so well. Well, the MSM got it wrong (again): Remind me again — who’s losing in Basra? posted at 9:48 am on March 30, 2008 by Ed Morrissey When the Iraqi government finally took the long-expected action to establish control of Basra after the British pullback left it in the hands of militias and gangsters, suddenly the media declared that the country had reached the brink of collapse. They highlighted stories of defections from the Iraqi military and opined that the surge had failed. Moqtada al-Sadr would finally ...

Peter D. Feaver, professor of political science and public policy at Duke University and director of the Triangle Institute for Security Studies, analyzes the success of the surge in Commentary (via WSJ): Anatomy of the Surge By PETER D. FEAVER March 26, 2008 Over the past 16 months, the United States has altered its trajectory in Iraq. We are no longer headed toward a catastrophic defeat and may be on the path to a remarkable victory. As a result, the next president, Democrat or Republican, may well find it easier to adopt the broad contours of this administration's current strategy than to jeopardize progress by changing course abruptly. That would be an ironic, but satisfying, outcome to the tortuous journey on which the Bush administration's policy toward Iraq, and this nation's views of Iraq, have been traveling over the past three years. The administration's description of the long-term American goal--a democratic Iraq that can defend itself, govern itself and sustain itself, and will be an ally in the war on terror--has remained consistent from the time the war was launched in 2003 until now. What has shifted, due to sobering experience, is its sense of how long it might take to achieve this goal: a time frame that has stretched from months, to years, and even to decades. I witnessed the shift firsthand. For two years, from June 2005 to July 2007, I left my teaching position at Duke to join the National Security Council staff as a special adviser for strategic planning, and in that capacity I worked closely on Iraq policy. By the middle of 2005, it was painfully obvious to everyone involved that the only decisive outcome that could be achieved during President Bush's tenure was the triumph of our enemies, America's withdrawal, and Iraq's descent into a hellish chaos as yet undreamed of. The challenge, therefore, was to develop and implement a workable strategy that could be handed over to Mr. Bush's successor. Although important progress could be made on that strategy during Mr. Bush's watch, ultimately it would be carried through by the next president. This was the reality behind the course followed by the administration in 2005-06, and it remains the reality behind the new and different course the administration has been following since 2007. This new and different strategy, now called the "surge" but at one point called by insiders the "bridge," emerged out of a growing recognition over 2006 that our critics were right about one thing: Our Iraq policy was not working. At the same time, however, and whether knowingly or ignorantly, many of those same critics were insisting that the answer lay in pursuing precisely the same strategy we already had in place. That is, they were telling us that we needed (a) to push Iraqi government officials to come together politically and (b) to train Iraqi troops so that they could take over from American forces. We had been doing exactly these things for a year, and we had been driven to the brink. This was no solution at all. The results on the ground in Iraq made it clear that without a dramatic change, the president would be leaving his successor with an untenable mess, if not the prospect of a catastrophic American rout. A review of administration policy was therefore launched that led to the dramatic course revision we have seen unfolding over the past year-and-a-half. Next month, the military leader of the surge, Gen. David Petraeus, and America's chief diplomat in Iraq, Ambassador Ryan Crocker, will present their second report to Congress on the surge and its effects. Prudent and circumspect men, they will surely not advance bold claims on behalf of the policy the United States has been following under their leadership. But I expect they will speak more optimistically about the future than many thought possible eighteen months ago. Their testimony will demonstrate that, at last, the United States has a sustainable strategy for Iraq with a reasonable chance of success, and one that George W. Bush will be able to turn over with confidence to the next incumbent of the White House. How we got here is a story in itself.

In case you've forgotten the exchange: Turns out disbelief needs to be suspended to "buy" Hillary's version of what happened 12 years ago on her trip to Bosnia.

For every view, a dollar is donated to Operation Homefront to support the families of our troops. FYI, the man behind the counter is Medal of Honor recipient Fred Ferguson who, "was commander of a re-supply helicopter monitoring an emergency call from wounded passengers and crewmen of a downed helicopter under heavy attack within the enemy controlled city of Hue during the Tet Offensive . . . ." God bless them all.

The Amazing Michaels, Totten and Yon, report today from Iraq: (Photo by Michael Totten) The Liberation of Karmah by Michael Totten KARMAH, IRAQ – Just beyond the outskirts of Fallujah lies the terror-wracked city of Karmah. While you may not have heard of this small city of 35,000 people, American soldiers and Marines who served in Anbar Province know it as a terrifying place of oppression, death, and destruction. “It was much worse than Fallujah” said more than a dozen Marines who were themselves based in Fallujah. “Karmah was so important to the insurgency because we've got Baghdad right there,” Lieutenant Andrew Macak told me. “This is part of the periphery of Baghdad. ...

Just this week, I had a friend email a "news" story stating that the mountains of captured documents in Iraq showed that there were no links between Sadaam and al Qaeda. Huh? Saddam's Terror Links The Wall Street Journal March 24, 2008 Five years on, few Iraq myths are as persistent as the notion that the Bush Administration invented a connection between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda. Yet a new Pentagon report suggests that Iraq's links to world-wide terror networks, including al Qaeda, were far more extensive than previously understood. Naturally, it's getting little or no attention. Press accounts have been misleading or outright distortions, while the Bush Administration seems indifferent. Even John McCain has let the study's revelations float by. But that doesn't make the facts any less notable or true. The redacted version of "Saddam and Terrorism" is the most definitive public assessment to date from the Harmony program, the trove of "exploitable" documents, audio and video records, and computer files captured in Iraq. On the basis of about 600,000 items, the report lays out Saddam's willingness to use terrorism against American and other international targets, as well as his larger state sponsorship of terror, which included harboring, training and equipping jihadis throughout the Middle East. "The rise of Islamic fundamentalism in the region gave Saddam the opportunity to make terrorism, one of the few tools remaining in Saddam's 'coercion' toolbox, not only cost effective but a formal instrument of state power," the authors conclude. Throughout the 1990s, the Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS) cooperated with Hamas; the Palestine Liberation Front, which maintained a Baghdad office; Force 17, Yasser Arafat's private army; and others. The IIS gave commando training for members of Egyptian Islamic Jihad, the organization that assassinated Anwar Sadat and whose "emir" was Ayman al-Zawahiri, who became Osama bin Laden's second-in-command when the group merged with al Qaeda in 1998. At the very least the report should dispel the notion that outwardly "secular" Saddam would never consort with religious types like al Qaeda. A pan-Arab nationalist, Saddam viewed radical Islamists as potential allies, and they likewise. According to a 1993 memo, Saddam decided to "form a group to start hunting Americans present on Arab soil; especially Somalia," where al Qaeda was then working with warlords against U.S. humanitarian forces. Saddam also trained Sudanese fighters in Iraq.

From Gateway Pundit: Sizing Up Sacrifice Iraq War (5 years)-- 3,990 Batan Death March (one week)-- 10,000 Battle of Guadalcanal (186 days)-- 7,099 Battle of Guam (20 Days)-- 3,000 Operation Market Garden (9 days)-- 3,664 Battle of the Bulge (41 days)-- 19,276 Battle of Iwo Jima (39 days)-- 6,821 Battle of Pusan Perimeter (61 days-Korea)-- 6,706