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Attaboy, AP

 I don’t know what got into the AP.  They had some perfectly good mosque bombings to lede with, and they bury that to focus in undisparaging fashion on U.S. and Iraqi forces kicking al-Qaeda ass from Baqouba to Baghdad, with the help of erstwhile Sunni insurgents.  

Steven Hurst does refer to Diyala as an al-Qaeda “bastion” and I’d suggest “quickly diminishing refuge” as a better term.  Don’t forget they fled there from the heat in Baghdad and Anbar.  Now, heat’s on in Diyala. 

Remarkably matter of fact. Lacking the enthusiastic failure interpretations that usually accompany the daily terrorism roundups. Twenty-eight graphs before we see the word “militant” applied to terrorists.  “Fighters” and “insurgents,” yes, the former accurately describing the current activity, insurgents being a tad gracious to a crowd of murderers bent on chaos. And they just couldn’t help pressing Adm. Fox to acknowledge “increasing pattern of attacks” on Green Zone, though these are low-level harrassment to little effect as the track record and his full quote indicates:

“It’s clear that there is an attempt to get lucky shots and there is unquestionably an increasing pattern of attacks here against the International Zone. There’s no doubt about that.”

The latter I’m guessing is Kim Gamel’s work. She must have nodded off or stepped out for a sandwich during the “intense questioning” when Fox was badgered about whether attacking al Qaeda wouldn’t just drive the “insurgents” elsewhere. (Dingdongs, the insurgents are with us. Against the terrorists. No longer insurging.) But Gamel, Hanley, etal have gotta be worried. If this keeps up, it’ll be AP that has to “attempt to get lucky shots.”

But for now, good progress, Steven Hurst and AP.  Praise for the AP re Iraq is not part of my usual shtick, you know. I want to praise without reservation, but I need to know: Is someone asleep in New York? Is Charles J. Hanley too busy to ride herd, off moodily staring at the sun, boiling orange, as it slips below the western desert each evening; the river Tigris snaking, shallow and sluggish, through the city’s heart; listening to the muezzins’ call to prayer still blares from countless mosques, hoping the constants of war will also remain, chief among them the thud of sunrise explosions that he can fixate on as an alternative to meaningful war reporting?

Powerline notices a crack in another part of the armor, with more media acknowledgement of successes. What the devil is going on?

Maybe the polls are scaring them.

Not everyone’s happy with this operation. ConfYank encounters some America-bashing Willy Pete phakery.

And you can always rely on the Beeb for pro-terror bias.

Iraq the Model’s back with some what it all means.

More detail on the ops from the Fourth Rail.

Blackfive’s got your Odierno vid.

Scroll through North Shore Journal, home of Terrorist Death watch, for updates.

Neptunus Lex on the spread of the Anbar virus.

MNF-I here.

OK, take five with some totty at Spark’s. When you’re done, you can scroll through Tigerhawk’s pics of some other British heroes.

All set? Stratfor offers some interesting insight, though I have no idea who these “militants” are of whom they speak. Last time I checked, people who summarily execute civilians and indiscriminately blow up truck bombs, mosques, chlorine bombs, etc., for purposes of creating chaos and inducing terror, are called “terrorists.”  Look it up, it’s in the dictionary.  Then again, Stratfor thinks Iran can be negotiated with. Anyway, here’s Stratfor on Diyala:

During the last six months, many militant elements have been driven into Diyala, and U.S. fatalities in the province have seen a very distinct increase since January. Coalition efforts to talk with Sunni tribal leaders in Anbar province — the traditional support base of al Qaeda in Iraq and Sunni jihadist elements — have seen recent success. Sunni tribal militias’ opposition to al Qaeda has been building for some time, but struggles within the larger Sunni camp and pressure from security operations in Baghdad proper have gradually pushed the jihadists from Anbar province into Diyala. Coalition troops have simply followed the jihadists; a U.S. Stryker battalion has been operating in eastern Baqubah for several months, and more than 2,000 Kurdish peshmerga fighters were deployed to Baqubah the week of June 10 to assist with U.S. security operations already under way.

Though the coalition met with some success in working with Anbar’s Sunni tribal leaders against jihadists, Diyala’s population — 40 percent Sunni Arab, 35 percent Shiite Arab and 20 percent Kurdish — is much more diverse than Anbar’s. Diyala is one of three provinces that will be heavily contested in the Kirkuk referendum, which — according to Iraq’s constitution — is to take place before the end of 2007. However, volatile resistance from Iraq’s Sunni and Shiite factions likely will scupper the timeline. In the midst of these delicate sectarian tensions, however, last week’s peshmerga deployment was particularly unsettling for Diyala’s Arab population, since it gives the Kurds more armed influence in the province just as the United States attempts to deal with Shiite extremism within the leadership of Diyala’s Iraqi National Police units (a move that was key to successes in Anbar province and Tal Afar). But given the influence of both Kurds and Shia in Diyala right now, the province’s Sunni factions will be more difficult to split from their well-armed al Qaeda allies than the Sunnis in Anbar.

However, the U.S. ability to shift 10,000 coalition soldiers into a major operation outside Baghdad in the midst of a major security crackdown is the mark of significant operational flexibility. This flexibility will allow the United States to keep pressure on the jihadists and thus (it is hoped) impede their ability to plan complex operations and maintain the supply lines necessary to build explosives, such as those used in the recent spate of bridge bombings. Thus far, neither the recent bridge bombings nor jihadists’ attempts to supplement their bombs with chlorine gas have proven particularly effective. However, the latest bombing of the revered Shiite al-Askariyah shrine June 13 and the June 19 bombing of the Khillani mosque in Baghdad serve as reminders that al Qaeda is still capable of stoking the fire of sectarian tension in Iraq.

The comments about difficulty of getting Sunni cooperation in Diyala are a little dated, but the Kurdish dynamic is an interesting point and Stratfor seems to offer a realistic assessment of both the U.S. and al Qaeda to act.

Topics: Iraq, media, military

  Posted by Jules Crittenden at 12:32 am on Thursday, June 21, 2007

7 Responses to “Attaboy, AP”

1. The_Real_JeffS Says:
   June 21st, 2007 at 9:57 am

   Interesting…..both the recent developments in Iraq, and the possibly temporary shift in MSM attitude.

2. RebeccaH Says:
   June 21st, 2007 at 10:11 am

   Well, AP never saw a bandwagon they couldn’t jump on. Eventually.

3. saltydog Says:
   June 21st, 2007 at 2:43 pm

   I’ll just wait and see, thank you. Viet Nam taught me that the media is perfectly capable of turning a military victory into an national defeat.

   God speed to our troops.

4. wolfpangloss Says:
   June 22nd, 2007 at 12:02 am

   Notice how the MSM backs their own side when they can see something impressive and kinetic happening, but when it’s slow counterinsurgency work with no big operations they turn against their own side and romanticize the enemy that would kill them in a heartbeat, kind of like teens who have just realized that mommy and daddy aren’t perfect.

   There’s a lesson in here somewhere, about how to use Clintonish focus-group-tested messages to seed the media daily and drive the news in the desired direction, plus lots of special effects to wow the geeks in the media.

5. Don Surber » Blog Archive » Crittenden vs. AP Says:
   June 22nd, 2007 at 10:21 am

   [...] The Associated Press had no chance. Especially since it lost Jamail Hussein. [...]

6. Old War Dogs Says:
   June 22nd, 2007 at 6:44 pm

   Bill’s Nibbles, Open Post

   Today at Bill’s Bites: Indefinite light blogging (Way lighter even than most days, I hope. My ex is in the area and has my grandson, whom I haven’t seen in just over a year, with her. They’re supposed to come

7. Bill's Bites Says:
   June 22nd, 2007 at 6:45 pm

   A Quick Index To Today’s Posts, Quick Hits, Open Post

   Click here for a handy most recently updated posts at the top listing of the posts on this page. Click here to see a similar listing for the Old War Dogs site. Indefinite light blogging (Way lighter even than most days, I hope. My ex is in the area and…

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