MSM Defeatist Jim Krane debunked

Liberating Iraq | 10/4/04 | WOSG

[WOSG]

Jim Krane went after Bush before when he turned a US coup in capturing an Al Qaeda operative into questioning the war in Iraq: "A letter seized from an al-Qaeda courier shows Osama bin Laden has made little headway in recruiting Iraqis for a holy war against America, raising questions about the Bush administration's contention that Iraq is the central front in the war on terror." His bias was enough to make someone take notice.

Now that terrorism heated up in Iraq, did Jim Krane write any words that said: "Spate of Car Bombings lays to rest questions that Iraq is central front in the war on terror"? Nope, instead he writes nonsense such as: U.S. military is fighting the most complex guerrilla war in its history.

There he goes again. Lining up with MSM buddied doing yoeman's work for the Kerry campaign (eg, look at NYT and their tubes), he wants to convince us that our own military are bumblers and the enemy brilliant and winning.

This defeatist nonsense ignores a few basic facts: First, the size of the enemy. He says "the estimated 20,000 insurgents" - 20,000. Did we face that many before? I mean, that few, in the many counterinsurgencies our marines faced this past century?

Then the elements of the insurgency. The three dozen or so guerrilla bands agree on little beyond forcing the Americans out of Iraq.

This statement is specious nonsense and contradicted by his own article:

The largest insurgent bloc is composed of Iraqi nationalists fighting to reclaim secular power lost when Saddam Hussein was deposed in April 2003.

First, "Iraqi nationalists" is an insult to the nationalistic pro-democracy Iraqis building the new Iraq. These people are thugs, Baathists, Calling them 'secular' is foolish, since they are getting much help and are in alliance with Salafists and extremist Sunni clerics. The article quotes "an insurgent leader in Fallujah who identified himself as Abu Thar, a 45-year-old former colonel in the Iraqi army." We know that most of the 'insurgency' is simply former Saddam Hussein regime elements fighting to regain power.

The second is a growing faction of hardcore fighters aligned with terrorist groups, mainly that led by Jordanian Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. The U.S. military believes they want to turn Iraq into an anti-Western stronghold that would export Islamic revolution to other countries in the region.

What is not mentioned here is that these groups are Salafists or Wahhabists; nor is it mentioned that terrorists have come into Iraq to join the fight; nor is it mentioned that many such terrorists have been killed in our precision air strikes. What is also not mentioned is that many Baathists are posing as Jihadists as a way of creating the kind of 'energy' needed to bring more people on board their cause. Nobody will follow Saddam's henchmen for being Saddam's henchmen but maybe they will follow Allah.

A third group consists of conservative Iraqis who want to install an Islamic theocracy, but who stay away from terror tactics like car bombings and the beheading of hostages.

It is insulting to conservatives of any stripe to call these extremists 'conservative Iraqis'. Moreover, it is insulting to men like Al-Sistani, who might fall in the pro-Sharia camp, but who is not part of any opposition to US presence in Iraq. If they don't do the terrorism and the beheadings, then what do they do? The Association of Muslim Scholars acts as a front group for the extremists. As "Iraq the Model" pointed out, the group was formed by clerics who Saddam Hussein had installed. They support the terrorism by issuing fatwas against working with the U.S., refusing to join the political process and inciting violence. They claim they are not terrorists merely because they don't do the dirty work themselves. But they aid, abet and support it. No doubt that when money changes hands to free kidnap victims, they get their cut.

To call this group 'separate' from the rest of the insurgency misses the point. They have links to the regime of Saddam Hussein. They are linked also to the terror networks. This Unholy Trinity is a 3 pronged alliance - An AXIS of Iraqi Insurgency - that is working together.

The fourth, al-Sadr's Mahdi Army, seeks to make the cleric the nationwide Shiite leader.

Didn't this 'reporter' get the message? Mahdi Army was so decimated in Najaf that al-Sadr is, once again, contemplating dissolving the Mahdi army, so he can get into politics.

Ordinary criminals also pitch in on attacks when they are paid. And gangsters who abduct people regularly sell their hostages to terror groups, which have beheaded some.

There are 2 separate issues here: First, the Baathists and al-Sadr hired criminals. Second, the general anarchy has increased organized crime, especially kidnap gangs. But the second is not 'insurgency' of any type, it is just criminality.

But the bottom line is this: He speaks of dozens of guerilla bands, but on deeper inspection there are really 4 elements in the insurgency, 3 out of 4 of them linked closely together in the Sunni-based insurgency, 1 of the 4 the al-Sadr/Mahdi army faction. That's not 'dozens', that's effectively a 2 front war, with the Sunni front have multifarious elements and tactics at their disposal. Complex? Hardly.

Hoffman and other independent experts feel the insurgents are succeeding, with death tolls spiraling and a guerrilla-induced climate of fear that has reduced the U.S.-led rebuilding effort to a shambles.

Other experts, like me, will point out that September, while dangerous, was about as bad as May, and less bad than either April or last November. We can point out that 'havens' like Tal Afar and Samarra become 'former havens' and the security forces gain ground. We are succeeding and the insurgency are creating havoc but failing to do anything positive except create violence. It is specious nonsense to talk of a 'shambles' of US-led rebuilding when more has been done here in the last 18 months for Iraq than in the previous 18 years under Saddam. Examples: Electricity generation up 20% from pre-war levels, and fairer allocation so more of the country has electricity; The rebuilding of schools, hospitals and water treatment plants; The booming Iraqi economy.

Abu Thar, the former colonel who was interviewed by an Iraqi reporter for The Associated Press inside insurgent-held Fallujah, gloated over his compatriots' successes, saying U.S. leaders were publicly contradicting each other about the state of the war.

Yes, we are aware of the 'enemy within', but he ought not gloat. We will win this war and prove that we are strong enough to defy critics and our enemies both. He also said U.S. counterattacks that kill women and children are turning public opinion in the militants' favor. No mention of the effect of killing scores of insurgents at a time.

"We see the conflicting statements by the U.S. administration on Iraq as another sign of their defeat," Abu Thar said.

DO WE NEED TO READ ANYTHING MORE TO UNDERSTAND HOW HARMFUL DEFEATISM AND NEGATIVITY IS TO OUR CAUSE? The enemy gauges their chances based on how divided we are! They are clearly emboldened by the negative expressions of say Sen Kerry:

"More volunteers are coming to us because they are fed up with the humiliation and the misdeeds of the Americans. They feel it is a national and religious duty."

Clowns to the left of me, joker's to the right ...

Public opinion is the war's central front and it is tilting against the Americans, said James Dobbins, a former Bush administration envoy to Afghanistan and now a military analyst for RAND Corp. "If we can't protect the population, we can't secure its trust and support," Dobbins said. "If we or the Iraqi government lose that, we ultimately lose the war."

Contentless and vague defeatist statements. There is NO evidence that the tilt favors our enemies. Indeed the democratic center in Iraqi is going stronger. Polls numbers last showed that Allawi got high ratings, above 60%. The vast majority of Iraqis want democracy, exactly what we want.

U.S. military officers concede the situation is tough, but they say the intensity of the conflict could be much worse. And they argue that insurgents also alienate Iraqis with indiscriminate attacks - such as the car bombings Thursday in Baghdad that killed 35 children and nine adults.

Note the bias here based on the change in tone. In the statements the defeatist author wants to highlight the statement leads, with a tail-end clause describing who said it. These statements lead off with "they argue" ... Let's rewrite: Insurgents also alienate Iraqis with indiscriminate attacks - such as the car bombings Thursday in Baghdad that killed 35 children and nine adults, commanders say.

Commanders say U.S. strategy focuses on boosting Iraqi government control while fighting only the most necessary battles.

"History is replete with insurgencies that failed," one general said privately during a discussion of Iraq.

History is also replete with insurgencies that triumphed. Vietnamese guerrillas ousted the United States in 1973. Afghan militias similarly embarrassed the Soviet Union in 1989.

The journalist now tries to argue with a general and fails in the attempt. Two success is hardly a historical record of note. And the strategic order of battle is ignored. Both Vietnam and Afghanistan were proxy superpower battles,

If Iraqi insurgents succeed in toppling the U.S.-backed government, analysts believe the stark differences in the groups' goals could lead to a civil war that might break Iraq into rival fiefs.

This is nonsense. RUMSFELD debunks this in a Rita Cosby interview: "No one sees any sign of civil war in that country at the present time. There, obviously, used to be worries about it, and there have been ethnic conflicts in the past. But at the moment, that isn't the risk. The risk is that the terrorists and the extremists and the people who are running around chopping off people's heads and killing innocent men, women and children will take over that country. And imagine a country ruled by people who go around chopping off people's heads. That's a dark future. The Taliban rule is a perfect recent example of what Iraq would look like."

Bad decisions by the U.S.-led occupation administration are widely blamed for stoking the war. Those cited most often are the disbanding of the Iraqi army and the banning of Saddam's political leaders from public life, both of which are said to have converted potential allies into enemies.

The breath-taking idiocy of this comment is a marvel of illogic. Because we didnt bring these wolves into the fold, they went off and started killing Americans and bombing other Iraqis. And we were supposed to improve the situation by letting these thugs stay in the army and in Government?!? Then, we would be talking about something far worse - an insurrection inside the Iraqi security forces and a real 'coup d'etat' type of possibility. It's not happening, because the New Iraq is committed to democracy and the old power structure has been swept awaay.

The decision not to use the Baathists has been confirmed as correct by their behavior since then. They are dangerous thugs who murder to gain power.

Independent analysts say 16 months of escalating warfare by U.S. troops with little practical experience in fighting insurgents have made clear the difficulty of defeating militants who mount attacks while hiding and moving among civilians.

More ahistorical idiocy. The marines have a century of knowledge fighting 'small wars', and won most of their fights of this type. This is

The analysts say the most promising chance for victory lies in U.S.-trained Iraqi security forces. U.S. and Iraqi troops reclaimed the city of Samarra from insurgents over the weekend, but it's unclear how much fighting was done by the Iraqis.

Iraqis took the Golden Mosque. Iraqis are patrolling the streets. It's a good start.

"The United States can buy the Iraqi government time to get organized, but the U.S. has become too unpopular and lost too much support among the population to be able to itself win a counterinsurgency campaign," Dobbins said.

The U.S. military has few homegrown models for counterinsurgency success. Its last two major campaigns - in Somalia in 1993 and in Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s - failed.

Again, that a historical idiocy, the only war in world history was Vietnam. Must have the Kerry disease. It treats our professional military like bumblers who can't learn from Israel or never defeated a guerilla army, like we did in the Philippines (1898-1902). The fact is, we know how to win guerilla wars. And guess what we are doing in Iraq? We are winning a Guerilla War, and this article talks about the hundred things our military commanders have been doing for the last 18 months to win hearts and minds, defeat the insurgents, and turn Iraq into a democratic nation.

Both times, a tenacious enemy fought hard enough to force U.S. troops from its soil. No one has said Iraqi insurgents are as tough as the Communist Viet Cong, and the United States had little incentive to stay in Somalia once militias made things difficult. "Vietnam was not easy, but it was certainly far less complex and more straightforward," Hoffman said.

There is no more complexity to a baathist-led insurgency than a communist-led and Soviet-funded guerilla war in Vietnam. The retaking of Samarra was a cakewalk compared to the retaking of Hue City during the Tet offensive.

As the militants gain strength, they progress to fielding combat troops, Betts said. In Iraq, large formations of Iraqi insurgents have met with mixed success. U.S. commanders claim their troops killed more than 4,000 al-Sadr fighters in April and August. But Sunni fighters in Fallujah and other cities have mounted daring attacks and melted away with few killed.

This paragraph uses juxtaposition rhetoric to mis-lead to a desired erroneous conclusion. We are told "As the militants gain strength, they progress to fielding combat troops" yet in Iraq, that has been rarely tried and 'mixed success' is the wrong answer. Fixed formations have been routinely destroyed by the US military, not only the Mahdi army in August in Najaf, but also the insurgents in Tal Afar and Samarra recently. Guerillas always mount attacks and then melt away. Yet in Fallujah, we are killing the insurgents even in their lairs.

This AP article by Jim Krane took snippets of negative predictions, added the spice of hypothetical extrapolations, threw in the ravings of a baathist thug insurgent and treated it like wise counsel, to make a tossed salad of defeatism. There are few real facts to back it up. The one thing the defeatists have right about our effort to defeat the terrorists opposing the new Iraq is this: We haven't won .... yet.

[WOSG]

This MSM bs article was so bad I had to respond ... Also found at Liberating Iraq

Tell your favorite media 'pros' we are the monkey on their back!

[WOSG]

Your wrong about the debate - Kerry LIED is all :

http://freedomstruth.blogspot.com/2004/10/kerrys-debate.html

[WOSG]

DOH! ... wrong thread!

[ChristianDefender]

You're right man... how cud this MSM's mess up America's Army... kindly check their citizenship...