SUCCESS IN IRAQ: A MEDIA BLACKOUT

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SUCCESS IN IRAQ: A MEDIA BLACKOUT

Ralph Peters

Sadr: Hides in Iran as his Iraq minions lose.

May 20, 2008 -- DO we still have troops in Iraq? Is there still a conflict over there?

If you rely on the so-called mainstream media, you may have difficulty answering those questions these days. As Iraqi and Coalition forces pile up one success after another, Iraq has magically vanished from the headlines.

Want a real "inconvenient truth?" Progress in Iraq is powerful and accelerating.

But that fact isn't helpful to elite media commissars and cadres determined to decide the presidential race over our heads. How dare our troops win? Even worse, Iraqi troops are winning. Daily.

You won't see that above the fold in The New York Times. And forget the Obama-intoxicated news networks - they've adopted his story line that the clock stopped back in 2003.

To be fair to the quit-Iraq-and-save-the-terrorists media, they have covered a few recent stories from Iraq:

* When a rogue US soldier used a Koran for target practice, journalists pulled out all the stops to turn it into "Abu Ghraib, The Sequel."

Unforgivably, the Army handled the situation well. The "atrocity" didn't get the traction the whorespondents hoped for.

* When a battered, bleeding al Qaeda managed to set off a few bombs targeting Sunni Arabs who'd turned against terror, that, too, received delighted media play.

* As long as Baghdad-based journalists could hope that the joint US-Iraqi move into Sadr City would end disastrously, we were treated to a brief flurry of headlines.

* A few weeks back, we heard about another Iraqi company - 100 or so men - who declined to fight. The story was just delicious, as far as the media were concerned.

Then tragedy struck: As in Basra the month before, absent-without-leave (and hiding in Iran) Muqtada al Sadr quit under pressure from Iraqi and US troops. The missile and mortar attacks on the Green Zone stopped. There's peace in the streets.

Today, Iraqi soldiers, not militia thugs, patrol the lanes of Sadr City, where waste has replaced roadside bombs as the greatest danger to careless footsteps. US advisers and troops support the effort, but Iraq's government has taken another giant step forward in establishing law and order.

My fellow Americans, have you read or seen a single interview with any of the millions of Iraqis in Sadr City or Basra who are thrilled that the gangster militias are gone from their neighborhoods?

Didn't think so. The basic mission of the American media between now and November is to convince you, the voter, that Iraq's still a hopeless mess.

Meanwhile, they've performed yet another amazing magic trick - making Kurdistan disappear.

Remember the Kurds? Our allies in northern Iraq? When last sighted, they were living in peace and building a robust economy with regular elections, burgeoning universities and municipal services that worked.

After Israel, the most livable, decent place in the greater Middle East is Iraqi Kurdistan. Wouldn't want that news getting out.

If the Kurds would only start slaughtering their neighbors and bombing Coalition troops, they might get some attention. Unfortunately, there are no US or allied combat units in Kurdistan for Kurds to bomb. They weren't needed. And (benighted people that they are) the Kurds are pro-American - despite the virulent anti-Kurdish prejudices prevalent in our Saudi-smooching State Department.

Developments just keep getting grimmer for the MoveOn.org fan base in the media. Iraq's Sunni Arabs, who had supported al Qaeda and homegrown insurgents, now support their government and welcome US troops. And, in southern Iraq, the Iranians lost their bid for control to Iraq's government.

Bury those stories on Page 36.

Our troops deserve better. The Iraqis deserve better. You deserve better. The forces of freedom are winning.

Here in the Land of the Free, of course, freedom of the press means the freedom to boycott good news from Iraq. But the truth does have a way of coming out.

The surge worked. Incontestably. Iraqis grew disenchanted with extremism. Our military performed magnificently. More and more Iraqis have stepped up to fight for their own country. The Iraqi economy's taking off. And, for all its faults, the Iraqi legislature has accomplished far more than our own lobbyist-run Congress over the last 18 months.

When Iraq seemed destined to become a huge American embarrassment, our media couldn't get enough of it. Now that Iraq looks like a success in the making, there's a virtual news blackout.

Of course, the front pages need copy. So you can read all you want about the heroic efforts of the Chinese People's Army in the wake of the earthquake.

Tells you all you really need to know about our media: American soldiers bad, Red Chinese troops good.

Is Jane Fonda on her way to the earthquake zone yet?

Ralph Peters' new book, "Looking For Trouble: Adventures in a Broken World," hits stores on July 4.

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Apparently we still have troops there. But they are being used less and less.

Iraqi Troops Seize Control of Baghdad's Sadr City

Tuesday, May 20, 2008

May 20: Iraqi soldiers stand guard by a wall built recently by U.S. forces in the Shiite enclave of Sadr City in Baghdad, Iraq.

BAGHDAD — Thousands of Iraqi troops moved unchallenged into Baghdad's Sadr City Tuesday to seize the Shiite militia stronghold, in the largest attempt yet by the government to impose control, an Iraqi military spokesman said.

The large Iraq force backed by tanks entered the sprawling district before dawn, with troops taking up positions on street corners and deploying on rooftops as Iraqi Humvees patrolled the streets, residents said.

• Click here to view photos.

The move is the strongest attempt yet by the government to impose control over the district, which has long been the unquestioned bastion of the Mahdi Army, the militia loyal to Muqtada al-Sadr. Iraqi and U.S. troops have in the past largely stayed on the neighborhood's edges.

The district erupted into violence in early April after an Iraqi offensive against Shiite militias in the southern city of Basra, and for weeks has been the scene of skirmishes between militiamen and U.S. and Iraqi forces.

Military spokesman Brig. Gen. Qassim al-Moussawi said the troops were deploying in the district as part of a fragile truce reached last week between al-Sadr and the government. So far, there has been no violence in the deployment, code-named "Operation Peace," he said.

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Photo Essays

o Iraqi Troops Target Sadr City

"The government chose the approach of preventing bloodshed, and entered the city to coordinate with the representatives of the Sadr movement, to achieve stability and security, impose the rule of law and offer service," he told reporters in Baghdad.

• Joint Chiefs' Mullen to Congress: Iran Actions 'Directly Jeopardize' Iraq Peace

Al-Moussawi said three brigades with about 10,000 troops were involved in the deployment. He and the U.S. military said American troops were participating, though al-Moussawi said U.S. forces were nearby in case their support was needed.

The deal signed by the Sadrists and Iraq's main Shiite political bloc took effect on May 11, calling for a cease-fire that would allow Iraqi forces to take over security in Sadr City. It prohibited any attack against residential areas, government offices and the U.S.-protected Green Zone, which had faced steady rocket and mortar fire.

But the Sadrists rejected calls by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to surrender weapons, saying Mahdi fighters have no "medium or heavy weapons."

Under the compromise, Iraqi forces promised to try to refrain from seeking American help to restore order. U.S. military officials said they would follow the Iraqis' lead.

The agreement gave a timeframe of gaining control as early as last Wednesday, but the Iraqis apparently needed more time to clear roadside bombs from the area along with other preparations.

The Iraqi forces in vehicles and on foot rolled into Sadr City down streets with burned out shops and buildings pockmarked with gunfire — the signs of the years of violence and clashes with U.S.-Iraqi forces that have plagued the district of some 2 million people.

Iraqi soldiers also found a large weapons cache on the grounds of the Shaaroofi mosque Monday in the Shaab district, a Shiite militia stronghold that is adjacent to Sadr City, according to a U.S. military statement.

The find included eight armor-piercing roadside bombs known as explosively formed penetrators, or EFPs, seven rocket-propelled grenades as well as other munitions and documents detailing kidnappings and murders, the military said.

The military said U.S. soldiers did not deploy around the mosque to avoid offending Islamic sensibilities.

The Sadr City operation is the latest by al-Maliki's government aimed at imposing control over areas dominated by armed groups. Besides the April sweep in Basra, Iraqi forces have been conducting a crackdown for more than a week in the northern city of Mosul, aimed at uprooting Al Qaeda in Iraq fighters and other Sunni insurgents.

Insurgents, meanwhile, targeted members of U.S.-allied Sunni groups that have turned against Al Qaeda in the volatile Diyala province.

Four anti-Al Qaeda fighters were killed by gunmen in an ambush near Duluiyah, north of Baghdad, and a 7-year-old boy was killed when a homicide bomber blew himself up near the house of the head of the so-called awakening council in Mandali, east of the capital.

Elsewhere in Diyala, shells slammed into the center of Balad Ruz, 45 miles northeast of Baghdad, killing three civilians and wounding nine others.

A bomb also exploded inside a minibus in Baghdad, killing two passengers and wounding five others.

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