Posted on 11/19/2007 7:43:43 PM PST by jdm
BAGHDAD, Nov. 19 — Five months ago, Suhaila al-Aasan lived in an oxygen tank factory with her husband and two sons, convinced that they would never go back to their apartment in Dora, a middle-class neighborhood in southern Baghdad.
Today she is home again, cooking by a sunlit window, sleeping beneath her favorite wedding picture.
*snip*
The security improvements in most neighborhoods are real. Days now pass without a car bomb, after a high of 44 in the city in February. The number of bodies appearing on Baghdad’s streets has plummeted to about 5 a day, from as many as 35 eight months ago, and suicide bombings across Iraq fell to 16 in October, half the number of last summer and down sharply from a recent peak of 59 in March, the American military says.
As a result, for the first time in nearly two years, people are moving with freedom around much of this city. In more than 50 interviews across Baghdad, it became clear that while there were still no-go zones, more Iraqis now drive between Sunni and Shiite areas for work, shopping or school, a few even after dark. In the most stable neighborhoods of Baghdad, some secular women are also dressing as they wish. Wedding bands are playing in public again, and at a handful of once shuttered liquor stores customers now line up outside in a collective rebuke to religious vigilantes from the Shiite Mahdi Army.
Iraqis are clearly surprised and relieved to see commerce and movement finally increase, five months after an extra 30,000 American troops arrived in the country.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
ping.
NY TIMES!!!
Surprise, surprise!
I think some sycophant from the Times cut and pasted a quote about Hillary by accident.
I know the Punditocracy just can’t stand to tell the truth.
Sorry, didn’t mean to be a smarta$$ on this good news story, just couldn’t resist.
Now we know what Hillary did with Socks the Cat.
LOL!
The Dems MUST have a strategy to counter this. They are losing.
My guess is that they will just try to minimize everything that has happened.
Or they will try to take credit for it somehow.
And say they could have done it sooner!
I think this is great and I hope it continues. But because we’re getting so excited about it, I expect a huge response from the remaining terrorists, which the MSM/DNC will use to argue against the war and for a pullout. I think the public will be duped like Vietnam (TetO).
A huge attack with lots of lives lost. The meme becomes, look the gains were short lived, it’s hopeless, they’re back, it’ll never end, etc. All they need is a few spectactular attacks (same thing goes here in the US) and help from their MSM/DNC friends and the pendullum swings back the other way.
The said part will be seeing the dems and left blogs all but celebrate if and when it happens. These guys know us well having studied vietnam, sommalia, recent events, etc. They know how to manipulate the useful idiots and the media. Watch for a string of big attacks sometime soon or right before the 2008 election. They may be down, but they’re not out and they don’t need much to get the embolden the defeatists and sway the public who barely pays attention and accepts what the media feeds.
I think the GOP should recognize and make a point about all this progress, but caution that they can, may, and likely will carry out attacks, even major ones and we have to be prepared and not swayed if they do. Fact is, I don’t think the public understands how these guys work, that it’s all about media attention.
“My guess is that they will just try to minimize everything that has happened.”
Already being done. See Reid’s last comments. No progress. They’re also shifting the target from security to political progress.
“Or they will try to take credit for it somehow.” Doing that too.
They’re so lame and so predictable.
How much do you want to bet that Hillary will come out within the next few weeks and say “Remember, peoples, I voted to go into Iraq and I’m very proud of my vote; look at all that we’re accomplishing.”
If they could do big attacks, they would have.
They can’t.
5 bucks she does,donated to FR.
Lol! Chris Mathews on MSNBC has not mentioned Iraq or the good news coming out of Iraq in the past 3 weeks. ‘’NADA’’! It’s like it never happened at all!Too bad the RATS and the MSM are invested in defeat. It looks like OUR troops are winning and they are on the losing side again!
Agreed.
But...but...it’s the “very presence” of American troops in Iraq that is “creating more terrorists,” isn’t it?
Iraq should be awash with terrorists right about now, shouldn’t it? Shouldn’t it?
Oh wait, that's old propaganda....OK, got it now...there is nobody left to kill over there (heard a maroon caller on Rush Limbaugh say this). It must look like a ghost town now.
Hey, that's what I'm hearing over here anyway.
< /heavy sarcasm >
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