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| Iraq |
| Bread and a Circus Part 2 (Yon) |
| 2007-08-07 |
| Teasers. Go read the whole thing. Lots of pictures and lots of video links. The American press that flooded in for the kinetic fighting in Baqubah left when the shooting stopped. Their interest waned for covering these aspects of counterinsurgency. They were gone and missing the real story. Nobody was even watching, but this play was not for the Americans journalists, it was for the Iraqi people. So with the drivers frightened and ready to abort, the mission could do worse than merely fail, it could backfire. (Like the entire war.) The story in the Iraqi press might be that after 10 months of no food shipments to Baqubah, Arrowhead Ripper is launched, and….food shipments do not resume, and Baqubah and Diyala Province are abandoned by the Iraqi government in Baghdad. This would be a terrific media victory for al Qaeda and its push to deepen the civil war here. Two officials were engaged in a conversation about how al Qaeda was able to infiltrate trouble spots in Iraq so effectively. The illuminating exchange revealed how much of the strife in Iraq is rooted not in religious fervor, but in greed. Greed for power, greed for money. The video camera was running. Watch this excerpt on videotape (at link) When the convoy finally arrived in Baqubah, the local media was there, along with Provincial leadership, and LTC Johnson gave full credit to the Mayor and other leaders right there in front of the Iraqi media. It was straight out of a Bruce Willis movie where Johnson saves the day, then watches from out of the spotlight as the Mayor and Governor get all the credit. Nobody mentioned Tonto. Other “Information Operations” were under way to not only show the people that food distribution had restarted but also that the Shia in fact had released the food for Baqubah. The distribution may have begun in fits and starts, but the information battle seemed to be a decisive win. And so we started with 16 trucks, but before it was all over, they had sent 94 trucks of food to Baqubah. There was enough food, according to our Army, to feed 200,000 people for 30 days. I recalled one of the bureaucrats comments, upon hearing that al Qaeda had scattered like rabbits out of Baqubah. He seemed at first not to believe that news, but once he got confirmation, he made a point to tell us what that news actually meant: if al Qaeda was done in Baqubah, al Qaeda was done in Iraq. |
| Posted by:Bobby |
| #5 Wouldn't it be nice for the West Side denizens of New York Time's readers to one day be having their bagels and coffee to read about how the AQ in |
| Posted by: Jack is Back! 2007-08-07 16:02 |
| #4 It appears that the word around Iraq is that al Q has a lot of stupid rules and Iraqis are now uniting against them and in support of an Iraq they don't yet understand. Al Q has also made themselves unwelcome by their free lance killing of Iraqi children to make a point. In some sick reality, we need al Qaeda to remain a force for as long as we will be training and expanding Iraq's ground forces. The unitification factor provided by al Q is enough to keep the sunni and shia off each other's throats. |
| Posted by: wxjames 2007-08-07 11:26 |
| #3 Yon does damn fine reporting. |
| Posted by: JohnQC 2007-08-07 08:57 |
| #2 too bad we don't have any MSM reporting like this. |
| Posted by: sinse 2007-08-07 08:31 |
| #1 a terrific media victory for al Qaeda and its push to deepen the civil war here As well as a great story for our friends at The New York Times. |
| Posted by: Bobby 2007-08-07 07:12 |