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| Iraq |
| Will the real Ramadi please stand up? |
| 2006-12-02 |
| By Michael Fumento "The U.S. military is no longer able to defeat a bloody insurgency in western Iraq [Al Anbar Province] or counter al Qaeda's rising popularity there, according to newly disclosed details from a classified Marine Corps intelligence report," began a front-page article in yesterday's Washington Post by Dafna Linzer and Thomas E. Ricks. It concerned the so-called "Devlin Report," a five-page document allegedly filled with gloom and doom. It contrasts completely with my article Return to Ramadi, in the Nov. 27 Weekly Standard, in which I write that the largest city in the province is slowly being reclaimed from al Qaeda. By coincidence, the day my article hit the stands the Times of London published an extensive article coming to the same conclusion as mine. But for the timing, you'd practically think one of us had plagiarized the other. Why such different conclusions between our articles and the Post's and whom to believe? It helps to know that the Times writer and I both went to and reported from Ramadi. We didn't summarize classified documents or quote unnamed sources. Linzer and Ricks stayed home and reported from Washington, relying entirely on an unpublished document in addition to quoting a "senior intelligence official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity." I have recently ripped the media's "Baghdad Brigade" for pretending it can cover a country the size of California from a single Iraqi city. What does that say about those who think they can cover Al Anbar from Washington? All of this illustrates a point I and others have desperately tried to make, that you cannot understand the Anbar if you haven't been there. That's why I went three times to the province and twice to Ramadi itself. It wasn't to attend a beerfest. It may also help explain things that Ricks has a recent book declaring the war a "Fiasco," and hence is already inclined towards a pessimistic view. Top-notch milblogger Bill Roggio at The Fourth Rail declares, "Military and intelligence sources that I spoke to who have read the [Devlin] report indicate that they largely agree with [it] . . . but not as presented by the Washington Post." (Emphasis his.) Alas, as much attention as my article has gotten it's hard to compete with a Post A1 article. Further, as Vietnam's Tet Offensive proved, guerrilla wars are as likely to be decided in the media as on the battlefield. It's looking like Iraq will prove no exception. |
| Posted by:Steve White |
| #15 IMNSHO, the Sunnis screwed themselves by believing all the MSM's hype about how 'fearsome' they and the insurgency were. As a result the Sunnis lost any influence in the goverment and the security forces to groups that will see that their heads end up on stakes. If the insurgency has gotten fiercer, it's out of desperation. |
| Posted by: Pappy 2006-12-02 22:30 |
| #14 Start treating them as the enemy they are, freedom of the press is not freedom to not have your ass kick by a fellow citizen or your ass deported by the government as a hostile alien. Freedom of the press is about the government not interfering in the legal opertaion of the press. If you are doing illegal things, like giving away state secrets, the First Amendment doesn't cover you. |
| Posted by: Sock Puppet of Doom 2006-12-02 22:04 |
| #13 "The next war had better be completely finished in less than 3 months to prevent the media from organizing." I figure the next President who has to wage one will reckon he's got more like two weeks. Tops. "I wonder if the MSM assholes have ever thought about what this will look like?" If they have, which I doubt, they certainly don't give a shit. |
| Posted by: Dave D. 2006-12-02 20:55 |
| #12 wxj - But they've been there since the end of WW-II. There have been no consequences for it, either. Hell, they credit themselves with bringing down a President, trashing US Foreign Policy, installing an entire generation raised on the smell of their own 60's brain farts into the power positions of most of AmeriKKKa's institutions, and turned the entire US toward their Stalinist nightmare, er, utopia. |
| Posted by: .com 2006-12-02 20:46 |
| #11 I can make a case for repeal of the Freedom of the Press. No shit. They had an enormous chance to do good here in the US, but they obviously fucked up. They became the enemy of the people, and that sin cannot be tolorated. Put a price on the head of every journalist. |
| Posted by: wxjames 2006-12-02 20:40 |
| #10 Or, from now on during a conflict all media pays its own way and provides its own security and transpo. |
| Posted by: Broadhead6 2006-12-02 13:30 |
| #9 The next war had better be completely finished in less than 3 months to prevent the media from organizing. I wonder if the MSM assholes have ever thought about what this will look like? |
| Posted by: SR-71 2006-12-02 13:27 |
| #8 This is exactly why I've adovcated media blackouts as much as possible. In the case of Ramadi - at least for 90 days, concurrently loosen the ROE, and then turn our lads & the ISF loose on all suspected assholes. |
| Posted by: Broadhead6 2006-12-02 13:21 |
| #7 Hard to believe but Walter Cronkite was on our side during World War II. I'm not kidding. Walter lost me at Tet too. Walter was in the European Theater when the Bulge happened in December ‘44, when we were surprised by a enemy offensive, that killed far more than Tet, that resulted in the destruction of an entire American division, and just after a serious bloody drubbing in the Hurtgen Forest. He knew better. No excuse. I’m sure a Baker Group circa 1944 would have been working on an ‘honorable’ withdraw after that if not earlier in the bogged down human grinding machine that the bocage country was in Normandy for weeks after the invasion. |
| Posted by: Procopius2K 2006-12-02 10:47 |
| #6 Mikey the Viet Cong were pretty much destroyed during Tet. But they didn't have the endless bodies the Religion of Pieces has. There was then as now kind of traitorous 5th column we face today in the MSM. |
| Posted by: Icerigger 2006-12-02 09:00 |
| #5 Ah! I didn't think about that angle NS. Makes more sense to me now. |
| Posted by: Shipman 2006-12-02 08:37 |
| #4 Hard to believe but Walter Cronkite was on our side during World War II. I'm not kidding. His life's conduct makes a lot more sense when you consider that in World War II he was on the side of the Soviet Union as well as the U. S. Which was intentional and which coincidence? |
| Posted by: Nimble Spemble 2006-12-02 08:18 |
| #3 ...as Vietnam's Tet Offensive proved, guerrilla wars are as likely to be decided in the media as on the battlefield. It's looking like Iraq will prove no exception. This being the case, that makes the MSM media the enemy, shouldn't they be treated as such in a real physical fashion? |
| Posted by: Sock Puppet of Doom 2006-12-02 07:17 |
| #2 Hard to believe but Walter Cronkite was on our side during World War II. I'm not kidding. |
| Posted by: Shipman 2006-12-02 06:52 |
| #1 I guess it's a good thing that the Germans and Japanese didn't possess the resources, skills, and natural advantages that the enemy has in Anbar, or I guess we'd have lost WWII. Oh, wait .... |
| Posted by: Verlaine 2006-12-02 01:47 |