Success in Iraq Continues II
(Shhh! But don't tell anyone.)
What are the pro-terrorist lobby and al-Fedaban Americans to do when the New York Times starts writing about military success in Iraq? Where will they turn now for anti-American stories and doom-and-gloom predictions?
Continuing with my series on the success of President Bush and Gen. Petraeus' (yes, the Iraq war is now mostly reduced to the back pages of the A section of most liberal newspapers so many of you probably forgot the name of the General leading our forces in Iraq; you so seldom see it in print these days) surge strategy in Iraq, I simply re-produce the beginning of a story in the New York Times from November 20, 2007. I'm not calling the story one of the Times' hard-hitting news stories, but that it was published at all is telling.
Baghdad’s Weary Start to Exhale as Security Improves
The New York Times
November 20, 2007
BAGHDAD - 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. And yet, she and her family are remarkably alone. The half-dozen other apartments in her building echo with emptiness and, on most days, Iraqi soldiers are the only neighbors she sees.
“I feel happy,” she said, standing in her bedroom, between a flowered bedspread and a bullet hole in the wall. “But my happiness is not complete. We need more people to come back. We need more people to feel safe.”
Mrs. Aasan, 45, a Shiite librarian with an easy laugh, is living at the far end of Baghdad’s tentative recovery. She is one of many Iraqis who in recent weeks have begun to test where they can go and what they can do when fear no longer controls their every move.
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. (End of New York Times excerpt.)
For the complete story, please follow the link:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/20/world/middleeast/20surge.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
Happy Thanksgiving to all, but especially to our troops and their families.
(Shhh! But don't tell anyone.)
What are the pro-terrorist lobby and al-Fedaban Americans to do when the New York Times starts writing about military success in Iraq? Where will they turn now for anti-American stories and doom-and-gloom predictions?
Continuing with my series on the success of President Bush and Gen. Petraeus' (yes, the Iraq war is now mostly reduced to the back pages of the A section of most liberal newspapers so many of you probably forgot the name of the General leading our forces in Iraq; you so seldom see it in print these days) surge strategy in Iraq, I simply re-produce the beginning of a story in the New York Times from November 20, 2007. I'm not calling the story one of the Times' hard-hitting news stories, but that it was published at all is telling.
Baghdad’s Weary Start to Exhale as Security Improves
The New York Times
November 20, 2007
BAGHDAD - 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. And yet, she and her family are remarkably alone. The half-dozen other apartments in her building echo with emptiness and, on most days, Iraqi soldiers are the only neighbors she sees.
“I feel happy,” she said, standing in her bedroom, between a flowered bedspread and a bullet hole in the wall. “But my happiness is not complete. We need more people to come back. We need more people to feel safe.”
Mrs. Aasan, 45, a Shiite librarian with an easy laugh, is living at the far end of Baghdad’s tentative recovery. She is one of many Iraqis who in recent weeks have begun to test where they can go and what they can do when fear no longer controls their every move.
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. (End of New York Times excerpt.)
For the complete story, please follow the link:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/20/world/middleeast/20surge.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
Happy Thanksgiving to all, but especially to our troops and their families.
posted by Zack at 8:15 AM
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