Brigadier General John Batiste spoke well of his Iraqi counterparts yesterday. And accurately, as an Iraqi Army unit again caught thugs with their shoes untied:
Soldiers from the 201st Iraqi Army on patrol north of the city of Tikrit located a rocket-launching position in Kadasia on Jan. 11 containing three S-5K 57 mm Soviet-made rockets. The rockets were loaded into a homemade rocket launcher aimed at the city of Tikrit. Upon discovering the rockets, the 201st Iraqi Army Battalion called the Joint Coordination Center, which coordinated for an explosive ordnance demolition team to destroy the rockets in place. The EOD team successfully destroyed the rockets without incident.
Elsewhere: Is it time to celebrate when Reuters correctly reports a story that the Associated Press can't? NATO commanders believe some Iraqi security units are capable of training recruits on their own, and may send a smaller contingent than planned. The mainstream media, of course, has gorged itself for months with a narrative subtly (or not so subtly) implying "more troop deployments mean bad things." Reuters got it right. What did the AP do with good news? Give NATO a special dispensation so less troops would mean bad news.
Over at MSNBC, the lead picture read "TRAINING GROUND" this morning. Apparently that didn't meet the network's requirements for provocation, so now it reads "BREEDING GROUND." Keep a watchful eye; if the left can discredit the understanding that Iraq is central to the war, it will. (And recall, if you will, how unreliable the anti-liberation corners of the CIA have been.)
VITAMIN HANSON: Victor says directly what I've been more circumspect with (emphasis mine):
Almost all who supported the war now are bailing on the pretext that their version of the reconstruction was not followed: While a three-week war was their idea, a 20-month messy reconstruction was surely someone else's. Yesterday genius is today's fool — and who knows next month if the elections work? Witness Afghanistan where all those who recently said the victory was "lost" to warlords are now suddenly quiet.
"Almost all" is too broad a brush, but these days I see a lot of "shouldas" and "couldas" without any serious alternative. I also hear the same people who took the failed Taliban to be the scourge of mankind over a year ago ascribing the same qualities to the undeserving enemies of Iraq.
TRUE TO FORM: Craig Brett obliges. Now that's the Reuters I know!