Progress, Progress And More Progress INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY
11/16/2007
Winning: News from Iraq gets better by the day, but the media have done their best to downplay the turnaround and congressional Democrats have basically pulled the covers over their heads and pretended it doesn't exist.
There's an eery silence out there about what's going on in Iraq. It's almost as if the silence is, well, intentional. Here are just a few examples of what we're talking about, pulled from last week's developments:
In Basra, Iraq's second-largest city, British Major Gen. Graham Binns said that attacks against British and American forces have plunged 90% since the start of September.
Iraq Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki reported that terrorist attacks of all kinds are down almost 80% from last year's peak thanks directly to the U.S. surge of 30,000 new troops.
Amid growing signs that even Iraq extremists have tired of terrorism and killing, a Sunni religious group closed down the high-profile Muslim Scholars Association because of its ties to terrorists.
U.S. Major Gen. James Simmons, speaking in Baghdad, said Iran's pledges to stop sending weapons and explosives into Iraq "appear to be holding up." Roadside bombs, the leading killer of U.S. troops, have plunged 52% since March, he added.
Perhaps most touching, according to a report from Michael Yon, who deserves to be the first blogger to win a Pulitzer Prize, Muslims are asking Iraqi Christians to return to help build Iraq.
Iraqi Muslims recently crammed into St. John's Catholic church in Baghdad to attend a Christian service. According to Yon, "Muslims keep telling me to get it on the news. 'Tell the Christians to come home to their country Iraq.' "
Finally, there's this from Douglas Halaspaska, a reporter on the Web site U.S. Cavalry ON Point: "I came to Ramadi expecting a war and what I found was a city that has grown from the carnage, and all its inhabitants both Iraqi and American ? healing. I was not expecting what I found in Iraq . . . it was better than all of that."
Again, all this has taken place just in recent days, weeks and months.
The positive news has become simply overwhelming.Which makes it all the more curious why major newspapers and network TV news programs can lead with a barrage of news out of Iraq when things there go bad, but can't seem to find the space or time when things turn good. As the bad news dries up, their interest in the good remains nil.
It takes people like Yon, whose online webzine can be found at
http://michaelyon-online.com, to tell us what's going on not the highly paid prima donnas whose past reporting has made them so invested in defeat that they can no longer afford to tell us the truth.
Stranger still is the Democratic Party's response, as reflected in its recent actions in Congress.
We expected a certain amount of sheepishness on their part. After all, wasn't it just Sept. 11 that Hillary Clinton told Gen. David Petraeus his progress report on Iraq required "a willing suspension of disbelief". What we didn't expect was all the self-delusion and denial that now seems to mark Congressional Democrats' efforts on Iraq.
The Democrats are denying our troops the funds they need to finish their job by playing games like Friday's, when they tried to tie $50 billion in funding to massive troop withdrawals, beginning almost immediately.
The measure failed in the Senate by seven votes. But the question remains: Why would they do such a thing in a war America is on the verge of winning?
Meanwhile, as if that vote wasn't enough, Democrats ripped Iraq's government apparently oblivious to what's going on in Baghdad.
"Every place you go you hear about no progress being made in Iraq," Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid said Thursday. "The government is stalemated today, as it was six months ago, as it was two years ago. It is not getting better; it is getting worse."
Virtually nothing in those three sentences is true unless you replace "Iraq" with "Congress." Yet, Reid speaks for his party.
As Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer said, "The days are over when the money is sent no questions asked, when the money is sent without a price."
Yes, "price." That last word is telling, for the "price" the Democrats are exacting by playing politics comes out of our troops hides ? not Washington's. Our troops in Iraq need the resources to finish this war. By not funding them to the level needed to win, Congress will certainly endanger lives and make victory a bit harder.
If the Democrats want to keep playing politics as Iraq turns, fine. But what do they do next year if, as now looks likely, the U.S. wins?
http://www.investors.com/editorial/editorialcontent.asp?secid=1501&status=article&id=280108621532510
