Hat Tip: The Anchoress and My Pet Jawa <):)

A reader of my former blog by the name of Caleb has written an article about the surge, based on information from a source who is high up in the military structure of our country.

Caleb has given me permission to post this story on this site.

We have all heard what Gen. Barry McCaffrey has said, and now I want you to read the other side of that story.

I have graciously been offered the chance to do a guest post on a piece of information that I received regarding early results of “The Surge” in Iraq. Since this provides some optimistic early assessments, you will not likely see it on your TV news any time soon.

The writer of what is presented here cautions that it is still extremely early in the game, and it is no where near time to break out a cold Bud in celebration. The writer had occasion to talk to Gen. Petraeus and wrote about the conversation on March 20, 2007.

In one important point, Gen Petraeus said that, “People realize they’re not going to just leave them like we did in the past.” This has been a real sticking point with particularly the Shia in the southern half of Iraq. We left them hanging out before and the marsh Arabs (Shia) paid a terrible price at the hands of Saadam.

In another telling point, Gen. Petraeus said, “I walked down the streets of Ramadi a few days ago, in a soft cap eating an ice cream with the mayor on one side of me and the police chief on the other, having a conversation.” The general noted that this simple act wouldn’t have been possible just a few months ago. He noted, “And nobody shot at us.” The general points out that there is still a very long way to go, but major improvements are being noted.

When asked what tactics are working, the general said, “We got down at the people level and are staying. Once the people know we are going to be around, than all kinds of things start to happen.”

The general noted that where once they were scraping the bottom of the barrel for intelligence, now they have the beginnings of an intelligence overload. The general said, “After our guys are in a neighborhood for four or five days, the people realize they’re not going to just leave them like we did in the past. Then they begin to come in with so much information on the enemy that we can’t process it fast enough.”

The general reports that even the tribal leaders in Sunni al Anbar province have had enough of al Qaeda and the sectarian violence that they foment, all the civilian Iraqi deaths. The general reports that these tribal leaders are all entrepreneurial businessmen, and the violence is really hurting business and their wallets.

One of the civil projects that the violence had put on hold was a large hospital in the Sunni Triangle. Now we are there daily, the violence in down, and the hospital project is back on track. So are similar infrastructure projects. There is now work for the people to do to earn a living. The Sheiks have seen the misery that al Qaeda delivers and are encouraging the young Iraqis to join the Iraqi Army and Iraqi Police and make a difference in their country. And they are turning out in droves.

Petraeus is using a similar formula in Baghdad’s Sadr City. They are clearing it neighborhood by neighborhood. The troops literally move in. They are mainly US Army and Marines with the Iraqi Army supporting them. That ratio is reversed, however, in some areas. The troops stay in the neighborhood. They do NOT go back to the large fortified bases every evening. Petraeus says that the results have been dramatic.

“We’re using ’soft knock’ clearing procedures and bringing the locals in on our side,” he said. The general notes that the local people fear and loath al Qaeda. This new procedure is allowing the locals to begin to trust our guys, and they are gradually coming over to our side. When they saw that we were just returning to our bases each evening and thus allowing al Qaeda to own the neighborhoods at night, they were afraid to help us for fear of being tortured and killed. Now they are seeing the change in our methods and responding.

Another big change has been our targeting of gathering places, like markets and mosques, for protective actions. Concrete barriers are being placed to prohibit vehicle bombs from getting into the heart of crowds of folks.

Also, with real jobs becoming more and more available, the people are less inclined to join local militias or groups like the Mahdi Army of Maqtada al Sadr. General Petraeus also notes that the Prime Minister, who is Shia, is actually getting out in Sunni areas like Ramadi and doing politician type stuff to win over the Sunnis to the central government.

General Petraeus estimates that about half of the al Qaeda leaders that were in Baghdad at the start of the surge have fled or killed or captured. He says that we are atritting then “at a fearsome rate.”

Another positive step by Petraeus has been his rewriting of the Rules of Engagement. They had gotten so PC that they were causing our trigger pullers to hesitate for that split second that gets you killed in combat. The general says that some commanders down from his level had placed even more restriction on the troops because they were afraid that their careers would be ruined by some JAG prosecution of soldiers for decisions taken in the heat of battle.

General Petraeus says that he has cleared up the ambiguities and has prohibited anyone other than himself from initiating changes in the rules. He also has prohibited lower ranking officers from issuing “supplemental guidance” to their troops regarding the ROE.

In a previous tour in Iraq, when he was in command near the Syrian border, Petraeus became known as “King David.” He is regarded by all that know him as one of the brightest and most capable officers in today’s Army. He just finished rewriting the military’s book on urban warfare and insurgencies before being appointed to replace Gen. Casey in overall charge of American troops in Iraq. Retired Gen. Paul Vallely said that Gen. Petraeus “was the perfect man for the job.” when he was appointed to his current assignment.

The person that wrote this assessment opines that early indicators are positive and that early signs are that we are winning. Gen. Petraeus cautiously noted that, “We’ll be able to evaluate the situation for sure by late summer.” The author here, who is a retired Army officer and current military contractor, says that our job now is to give Gen. Petraeus and his troops time and space to get the job done, to actually win this war.

I have been extremely critical of Pres. Bush for the restrictions that he has placed on our military’s methods and abilities to fight this war. I will continue to be. No war should ever be fought in a PC manner. It causes us unnecessary casualties. That said, nothing matches my loathing and disgust for the “cut and run” crowd of mostly Democrats, aided and abetted by some very whiny and wimpy Republicans. Am I questioning their patriotism? YES! Now let us all get together behind Gen. Petraeus and our marvelous warriors, and win this darn thing and then come home.

Eagles up!

Caleb

As usual we ask if anyone has dissenting opinions to express them in a kind way and please do not say anything bad about our military. They are not the politicians who sent them to war.

We saw the orthopedic surgeon today and, despite the fact the swelling has gone down, he is still concerned because my husband’s elbow is still red and hot with some swelling.

He feels it is a staph infection that got in there in some unknown way since there is no cut on the elbow. This happens quite frequently according to him.

He extended the anti-biotic treatment my husband is receiving to ten days rather than the five days the hospital gave him.

If anything doesn’t look or feel right over the week-end we are to call him since he is the one on call this week-end and he will meet us at the ER.

If my husband gets up in the morning and something is wrong he is to go to the office since they have office hours until noon and it will save a wait in the ER while Dr. Powell might be doing surgery.

On Monday morning my husband has to go back to Dr. Powell and he will check it again. If, at some point he is not satisfied with the healing, he will send him to the Infusion Center at our local hospital to get an IV of Rocephin, a very strong anti-biotic. This will be done on an out-patient basis over a period of days to be set by the doctor.

He is feeling some better tonight but is very tired, which is unlike him. We ask your continued prayers.

Under the terms of a plea deal Australian terrorist detainee David Hicks has received a sentence of seven years.

It’s not clear if he will be given credit for the five years he has already served, but he will serve his sentence in Australia under the terms of the agreement.

Update: The plea deal allowed the sentence to be capped at nine months to be served in Australia.

From Thursday’s Omega Letter, a Christian subscription newsletter:

“Bread and Circuses”

The Senate followed the lead of the Congress and narrowly passed legislation that would, if it survived a presidential veto, take control of the Iraq War out of the hands of the Commander-in-Chief and give it to the Congress.

The Senate’s bill orders some troops home right away, with the goal of ending combat missions by March 31, 2008.

The Senate’s bill identifies March 2008 as a goal - giving the president leeway to ignore the deadline. The House voted 218-212 to require all combat troops out as of Aug. 31, 2008.

The provision is attached to a $122 billion bill that would fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Here is how that works. If the White House wants the money to keep fighting the war, then the president has to accept the withdrawal conditions attached to it. It is akin to the school yard principle; “it’s my ball, so we play according to my rules.”

Like the brat with the ball, if the President doesn’t let them set the rules for withdrawal by vetoing the bill, then the WHOLE bill dies, including the funding. Think of it! The United States military defeated on the battlefield — by the United States Congress! It is the equivalent to simply picking up the ball mid-game and taking it home.

Except that the ‘ball’ in this case is the expended sacrifices of American lives for a cause that, by a majority vote in both Houses, is unworthy of the cost. How many times has the Left thundered, “It’s not worth the cost!”?

What are they really saying? If the ’cause is not worth the cost’, then those who gave their lives FOR the ’cause’ died for nothing.

Is there another way of understanding that equation that perhaps I have missed? In the course of the past four years, some two million American soldiers have served tours in Iraq, some of them several times.

(One of them, S/Sgt Tom Kurek, USMC is staying at our rental in North Carolina while we are up in the Great White North and Tommy is coincidentally home on leave after completing this THIRD combat tour in Iraq. Semper fi, Marine!)

Sgt. Kurek has seen and done things he doesn’t talk about, even with old Marines like me or his dad, (a retired Marine captain). He’s seen the horrors of war up close and personal, suffered the loss of close friends, witnessed the inhumanity of battle — as well as the humanitarian efforts to improve the lives of ordinary Iraqis.

A declaration that purports to ’support the troops’ — while opposing the mission they endured so much to complete — is nothing short of a Congressional declaration that all the S/Sgt. Kurek suffered in his three tours, all the humanitarian reconstruction work accomplished along the way, all that his family endured while he was in harm’s way, all that anxiety, the separation . . . it was all for NOTHING!

It means leaving behind all the good works accomplished so far and turning the whole country of Iraq over to the tender mercies of the Islamic jihad. It means leaving our friends to the mercies of our enemies and breaking faith with every promise by every GI ever made to those Iraqis that helped in the fight against the terrorists.

The partisans in the House are prepared to sacrifice Sgt. Kurek’s service to the country as a casualty of their political war against George Bush. Now, multiply Sgt. Kurek — his friends and his family — times two million GI’s.

It may be a politically astute move for the Democrats, but it is morally bankrupting the country as a whole. Who wants to die for a morally bankrupt cause?

The Roman poet Juvenal coined a phrase in the latter part of the 1st century, “panem et circenses” (bread and circuses) to describe the ongoing decline of Roman democracy.

Roman politicians of his day kept their offices by bribing their constituents, at the expense of the public purse, until it eventually morally and financially bankrupted the mightiest empire the world had ever known.

With its politicians focused on pandering to their constituency and its treasury depleted, Rome’s mighty army crumbled, its borders shrank, and its democracy collapsed.

The cause of its decline and fall was so apparent to historians though the ages that no nation dared experiment with democracy for the next sixteen hundred years.

Assessment:

The Left is operating under the principle that the threat to America will vanish when George Bush is out of office and they are in control of the Executive branch. They are throwing all their energies into defeating the Republicans at the polls, even if it means forcing a US defeat on the battlefield to ‘expose’ the need for a change in government.

Let’s suppose, for a moment, that the moral bankrupts in control of both Houses were to win what the press is describing as a coming ‘battle between the Congress and the Bush administration’? Suppose that the administration had to withdraw the troops, either for lack of funding or a veto-proof Congressional mandate?

THEN what happens? If the Left has an answer to that question, they are keeping it a closely-guarded secret. The evidence suggests that not only do they NOT know what happens next, they really don’t care, provided they win their war against the Bush administration.

The war with Iraq didn’t start the war with al-Qaeda. Neither did George Bush. If Osama bin-Laden is to be believed, the war started when Bill Clinton withdrew US forces from Somalia in the face of the enemy.

That is when bin-Laden himself said he concluded America was a ‘paper tiger’ and declared jihad against the US.

And al-Qaeda fighters fleeing US forces in Afghanistan were already in Iraq when we got there, including abu Musab al Zarqawi.

The Iraq war isn’t the cause of the tensions between the US and Iran, so withdrawing from Iraq won’t help us there. (However, maintaining a US military presence on either side of Iran in Iraq and Afghanistan sure would.)

The case for staying on in Iraq is obvious. The terrorists won’t go home when we withdraw. They will follow us there. When they weren’t fighting us in Iraq, they were fighting us in New York, Pennsylvania and Washington. They aren’t fighting us OVER Iraq. They are fighting us IN Iraq.

Which is the more defensible tactical situation? Trained professional US military forces, armed, equipped and prepared for battle, against armed and dedicated Islamic terrorists hiding amongst the Iraqi population?

Or ordinary American men, women and children, unarmed, unprepared for battle, against armed and dedicated Islamic terrorists hiding amongst the American population? Is this hard?

Should the Left succeed in forcing an early withdrawal from Iraq, it will leave it wide-open to Iranian infiltration, turning Iraq into another Lebanon.

If the Left is successful, it will find itself facing a nuclear Iran in control of Iran, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon. But that evidently isn’t as important as defeating George Bush.

This is more than mere politics. It is politics without conscience. It is politics without honor. To the Left, any risk is acceptable, provided it brings Their Guy (or Girl, or whatever) to power in 2008.

No sacrifice (except their own) is too great, whether it be the personal sacrifices of our military forces, the sacrifice of America’s sworn promise to the Iraqis, or the future sacrifices a withdrawal in the face of the enemy would inevitably invite.

The Apostle Paul, specifically addressing the Church Age, described the ‘bread and circuses’ phase of the Western Christian democracies this way:

“This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, Traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God; Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away.” (2nd Timothy 3:1-5)

It reads like the US Presidential Campaign Strategy Handbook for 2008.

This article admittedly takes hits at the Democrats in Congress, but there are also many Republicans who are participating in the pork game.

Read especially the part before the Assessment, where he talks of the Roman democracy being destroyed precisely due to the same things our current and former congresses have done.

How much money can they tax us before we no longer have enough money to pay for the necessities of government, let alone the pork?

Think about it.

I am humbled.

Hat Tip: Sir Randall <):)