Redstate

Well done and thank you for sharing this fitting tribute to our men in arms.

The NYT printing this? I think not.

Letter Given Under Pressure, Aides Say

Baghdad:  A letter by the mayor of Tel 'Afar to the U.S. 3d Armored Cavalry Division praising the U.S. war effort was only written after the mayor was pressured into doing so by U.S. soldiers, aides say.

The aides, speaking anonymously for fear of reprisal by U.S. troops, said the mayor would never have written praise for the U.S. occupation in Iraq if not for the continued harassment by U.S. soldiers. "He would do anything", said the source "to stop U.S. troops from continuously harassing him and breaking his sacred customs by entering his home at night and terrorizing his wife and children, even if it meant writing a letter which is totally opposite from the truth"  

Believable, isn't it?

the NYT says so --- it must be phony.

Add that to the Rumsfeld Disinformation Campaign, it was likely written by someone from the Army Times  :>)

sorry if I wasn't clear enough. I guess it IS believable!

I'd like to see it myself.

and pushed "enter" too quickly.  DUH.

See the letter (I copied all of it) at Mudville Gazette.

your parody is simply reasonable -- this is exactly the kind of thing on which the NYT would spend resources.

Sad but its easy to believe that the NYT would try to pour cold water on it.

From the Mudville Gazette:

http://www.mudvillegazette.com/archives/004167.html

I've found Grayhawk to be about 99 percent accurate. I mean, it's not like he publishes stories of flushed korans, etc.

I also reprinted this article on my blog -- since I think it's important; and Mudville Gazette has a pretty good track record.

Interesting note: I spent about 15 minutes going through google images of Tal Afar; most of them were of perceived US indescretions in Tal Afar, carried by lib websites. Reminded me of the trumped up outrage over Jenin.

The WashingtonPost carried a story in September about what Zarqawi did to Quaim when he turned it into an insurgent stronghold: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/05/AR200509050
0313_pf.html The track record of insurgent peace and love to the citizens of the towns they manage to hold is not really happy.

Dan Rather and the NYT will soon be releasing the early drafts of this letter on White House stationery.

And then planted it with Greyhawk.  Because I'm part of the RDC--oh no, was that classified?

THIS IS NEWS!

It would be hard to find a more resounding endorsement by the Iraqi people that we are doing good work. It is such a shame that for this very reason you will not hear about it.

And, yes, I also truly believe that you would hear about it for weeks and a photo of this letter would be on the cover of TIME if it were a D pres. Heck, even a Democrat nobody can go to Saudi Arabia these days, make up attacks against the US and make news.

Oh well. Status quo.

But I am excited to hear about the letter. Thanks!!!

that our presence in Iraq is aggravating matters, not helping.

THIS, is for your reading pleasure.

THIS is what we call a HOOAH moment.

:)

My only comment is the fervent hope that we don't have a recurrence of earlier such cleanups, where the US forces left, and a vacuum was created which allowed the bad guys to trickle back in. Maybe the situation has changed since I last read anything about it.

The native good sense and goodness of the average American Joe/Jane is one of our strongest suits still. The savagery of these extremists is their most blatant weakness.

and then gave it to Bill Kristol who hid it in a Leo Strauss book and shipped it to Richard Perle who managed to have it planted in Iraq (without the Strauss book, of course) where an Army patrol would find it.

In a previous World War, we would have been reading this in every newspaper in the country.  It's sad how things have changed.

Thank you for bringing it to our attention.

And thanks to you, Moe, for front paging it (from your virus bed, yet!)

Too bad this will never be shown on the MSM. W should read the entire letter during a nationally televised speech. There are so many things I feel the administration is not doing to combat the constant stream of negative press.

The real war is being fought right here. And our side is playing nice(for the most part) with the enemy.  

Look on the bright side:  even our media regards such a warm expression of appreciation from an Iraqi leader to be a dog-bites-man story.  Ain't that progress?

On the bright side, the mayor is a Sunni who do not often speak favorably of American action.  That said, Tal Afar is a split Sunni-Shiite town with continued hostility between the two camps.  Sunnis were being killed by Shia death squads in fairly high numbers before the Americans stepped in.

For more indepth coverage of the story, see the following Knight-Ridder story:

http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/13655532.htm

There is improvement but one should look at the situation without too much bias.  As the story indicates:  'At the same time, however, shops remain shuttered on the major thoroughfare that divides Sunni and Shiite neighborhoods, and the owners are fearful of reopening. Residents often are still afraid to leave their neighborhoods.'

Successful foreign policy requires that we view situations with clear eyes without believing either that: 1) Everything is just peachy, or 2) It's a quagmire without any hope of success.  Reality is often somewhere in the middle.

Congrats on the front page promotion!  Too bad the MSM won't run with it.

Way to go!

Maybe it's a translation issue.  But did anyone else notice these two lines and think how they could be interpreted from a Muslim perspective?

To the lion-hearts who liberated our city from the grasp of terrorists who were beheading men, women and children in the streets for many months.

Officers and soldiers alike bristle with the confidence and character of knights in a bygone era.

I'm a believer that things are going better in Iraq than what you read in the news.  But I don't think a Muslim would make references like this purposly.  

I hope it's just a translation issue.  If so, we need some better translators, with a better understanding of history and culture, not just language.

Am I way off base?

faxed from the kinkos in Tall' Afar

I may be wrong but this letter was sent to the US military so it may have already been translated by the mayor himself before he sent it out.

I was already thinking about who's going to start spinning the NYT story as "Bush is under seige..."

Lion-hearts is a fairly common description of bravery, dating from ancient times, and rather widespread throughout the region. It isn't a uniquely European phrase.

Ditto for knights. A knight is gnerally a mounted warrior on horseback known for bravery and daring in battle, and the Arabs have plenty of them in their history. Obviously the Arabic word and connotation is a bit different from our own (I assume, I'm not an Arabic scholar). I know have read about Muslim knights in the Middle Ages, and imagine the reason the word was translated was because, unlike samurai from the Japanese, their word would not be recognized by Western readers.

That's all conjecture, so take it for what you will, but I'd bet I'm not far from the truth.

This is an amazing letter, but you cheapen it with the irrelevant political pot shots.

It stands on its own as an example of our people doing good work in Iraq, and doesn't need the embellishment.

Being skeptical of both good and bad news is the only real way to function in this electronic age when so many things can be fabricated so easily.

I checked the Grayhawk site, seemed to be legit.  I checked the existence of the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment and they seem to exist and have been in Iraq.

I checked Tall'Afar, and it appears to be a genuine place with lots of fighting over the past year.

From your wapo link:

"In Tall Afar, U.S. and Iraqi soldiers entered the fourth day of an offensive against insurgents who have controlled large sections of the city for nearly a year. On Monday night, soldiers dropped leaflets from helicopters in the eastern neighborhood of Sarai, where commanders believe insurgents are entrenched, warning noncombatants to evacuate the area."

Lastly here's some more information about Tall Afar's Mayor from last January (2005).

http://www.timesdispatch.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=RTD/MGArticle/RTD_B
asicArticle&c=MGArticle&cid=1031780129197

"Fearing for his own safety, the mayor asked that he not be identified by name. He spoke through an Arabic interpreter in an interview on a U.S. military base here in northern Iraq. The mayor, a short, intense man with well-groomed hair and a mustache, had just finished meeting with a U.S. civil-affairs officer about disarray in his city's police department.

For the mayor, the U.S. military presence here is a double-edged sword. He said Tall 'Afar residents think the soldiers' presence "is necessary to establish security."

"On the one side, they think if the coalition withdraws from Tall 'Afar, there will be a tribal war," he said. "On the other side, the people think the occupation is a negative thing."

Well, he certainly seems to be more definite about the role of the troops in his city now.

In summary (and agreement) there doesn't seem to be a way to prove the authenticity of the letter, but at least it holds up under cursory scrutiny.

Thanks for the research ... I'll make an addendum to my own blog on it tomorrow.

For those who follow Army trivia and history I thought it interesting that the 3rd Cav is commanded by none other than H.R. McMaster, the leader at the famous Battle of 73 Easting from the first Gulf War.  After that battle, McMaster was put on the army's fast-track.

For those interested in this battle...

You know -- I'll say this. The mayor may or may not feel his own natural gratitude to US forces -- but it looks like the Lion Hearts in the 3rd Calvary has been doing a great job in difficult circumstances.

Awesome

From the article: TAL AFAR, Iraq - The mayor of this city in western Iraq is unhappy that his friends in the U.S. Army's 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment are going home soon, and he's written to President Bush and Gen. George Casey, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, begging them to extend the regiment's tour of duty until it's finished pacifying Tal Afar

Uhhh ... why aren't the public relations geniuses in the White House leaking those letters to major press outlets ... ?

I know, I know. They've never been geniuses at public relations ... :: winces ::

We managed  to whip Saddam's butt in about 24 hours!  This broken stuff is a lib scare tactic because Iran is rearing its ugly head.  That'll backfire after we take out Iran ... that should take about 24 hours too.

I'm a skeptic. I followed the Tal Afar reports in the news. The former mayor of Tal Afar resigned in September 2005. That month, newly trained Iraqi military led a ground assault into the city. Problem was, the Iraqi army was seen as mostly Shi'ite and they were targeting mainly Sunni Turkmen neighborhoods. Tal Afar is also located in a spot of tension between the Kurds, the Turkmen, and the Arabs. Saddam moved lots of Arabs in, in order to weaken the Kurds' power over the area, and a lot of Kurds came back after his downfall, and kinda threw people off the land. Things are tense in the area. Sadly, this mayor may not hold all that weight, and I'm still worried about the place.

I found this from September:

 Al-Hayat reports that a local Turkmen leader said that 152 civilians had been killed by "indiscriminate" fire coming from US helicopter gunships. It also said that (Shiite) Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari declare that he had ordered the operation against what he called terrorists, who, he said, had expelled people from their homes.

In yesterdays Washington Post there is an excellent article about Tall Afar and the 3rd ACR.  The excerpt below can be found at Captain's Quarters, thanks Captain Ed...

The Washington Post has an excellent article on the adaptations made by the US military to gain ground against the insurgencies in Iraq. Unfortunately placed on page A14, this in-depth look at the adjustments made by the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment in Tall Afar shows that the US military has conducted thoughtful analysis of their successes and failures and continue to adapt tactics and strategies as a result:

The last time the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment served in Iraq, in 2003-04, its performance was judged mediocre, with a series of abuse cases growing out of its tour of duty in Anbar province.

But its second tour in Iraq has been very different, according to specialists in the difficult art of conducting a counterinsurgency campaign -- fighting a guerrilla war but also trying to win over the population and elements of the enemy. Such campaigns are distinct from the kind of war most U.S. commanders have spent decades preparing to fight.

In the last nine months, the regiment has focused on breaking the insurgents' hold on Tall Afar, a town of 290,000. Their operations here "will serve as a case study in classic counterinsurgency, the way it is supposed to be done," said Terry Daly, a retired intelligence officer specializing in the subject.

U.S. military experts conducting an internal review of the three dozen major U.S. brigades, battalions and similar units operating in Iraq in 2005 privately concluded that of all those units, the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment performed the best at counterinsurgency, according to a source familiar with the review's findings.

So what changed? The unit commander, Colonel H.R. McMaster, changed the focus of the unit from simply fighting all comers to integrating a "hearts and minds" strategy to win the trust of ordinary Iraqis. He trained the unit in Arabic, Iraqi history, and customs in order to change their presence from menacing to respectful. He met with local tribal and civic leaders, even those sympathetic to the insurgency, and listened to their concerns. The 3rd ACR brought Iraqi soldiers into their operations and encouraged more to join them. Mostly they changed their tactics to confound the insurgents by taking advice from the local leaders.

When the time finally came to retake Tall Afar from the lunatics, they found that they had already captured most of them in the preparation phase. McMaster devised new battle tactics to flush out the rest without exposing American and Iraqi soldiers to IEDs unnecessarily. The result? Tall Afar's liberation came at a far lower price in both US and Iraqi lives and assets.

Read the entire article. Thomas Ricks' effort should not get lost on A14.

In addition, Col McMaster can be seen in a Pentagon Briefing here.  

• Click "View Programming" in the upper left corner.  
• In the pop-up window, click "Briefings / Addresses" in the upper left window.  
• Click the "MORE" button until you see Col. McMaster in the left-hand frame.  
• Click the Col.

unless you are signing up today. War is a terrible, terrible thing; a thing to be avoided whenever possible*. But when it can't be, then it needs to be prosecuted with all deliberate effort. And that inevitably means some very powerful weapons raining down on people who yesterday were just trying to live their lives.

In the case of Iran I think that in the long run it probably can't be avoided. They have a messianic death cult running things right now and I don't see much progress on the part of the Iranians to change that. And an attack on Iran is only going to serve to harden everyone, bad guys and good guys alike, into resistance. But that being said I don't think we can allow that to deter us from dealing with the far bigger problem; a messianic death cult with nuclear weapons.

Necessary as it may be a lot of good people, on both sides, are going lose their lives; so perhaps you can curb your exuberance.

----

* NB note the absence of the left's favorite "at all costs." Contrary to what the peaceniks say, there are things bigger than you and me; things worth dying for.

If you want to attend an anti-war meeting, go hang out with a bunch of Marines.

The situation in Iraq wasn't fixed in 24 hours.  It will likely take 24 years.  Or more.

Iran won't be that clean.  We can bomb the snot out of them very effectively.  Dealing with their military won't be anything like dealing with Saddam's.  The Iraqi army was pretty well disintegrated before we landed because of the lack of spare parts and maintenance.  The Iranian military is much better maintained.

Don't get me wrong, the Iranians are no match for the US Military.  If we have to put boots on the ground it has the potential to be really ugly.  They are better outfitted than the Iraqis and the terrain in Iran is not nearly so hospitable as Iraq.

The US military is the finest force, for good or ill, that has ever been fielded. If you want something broken in a hurry dial 1-800-USForces and stand back.*

While the Iranians are probably better prepared than the Iraqis were they obviously can't standup to the combined arms of the US. My guess is that the really bad times for any US troops on the ground will be from the same thing that bedeviled the Iraqis in the Iran-Iraq War; the suicide hoardes. Iraq dealt with them with chemical weapons but we don't have that "luxury", either practically or politically. The Al Queda suicide attacks would have nothing on a wave of a thousand teenagers or women running across the battlefield at American regular forces.

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* At the same time if you want it fixed you can dial the same number. One of my big complaints about Iraq is that we should have turned the reconstruction over the the military instead of the State Department.

If you have something that absolutely, positively needs to be destroyed overnight, call 1-800-MARINES.

In addition to the suicide hoards, the mountainous terrain in various parts of Iran are not hospitable to either armor or aircraft.

Plus, it will take a boatload (or several) of troops to play for real in Iran.  More, perhaps, than we can readily come up with in a hurry.

since I was an Army brat I was trying to be a tad more inclusive :-)

I have praised the effort and success in Tal Afar in an earlier post, but wish to opportunistically piggyback onto this reference to the political operatives which naturally attend every White House.



What I decry is the current administration's view of the press as yet another 'special interest', which is not the Fourth Estate, but rather a noisome force which is just to be jostled aside and played, unlike previous White Houses which dealt with the press as a useful and necessary proxy for the people who had lives to live, but wanted a way to question authority. I am not ascribing this to only the current administration; those of us who watched the West Wing got entertaining glimpses of how operatives have, as professionals at the political craft, their own view of the political universe which happens to include the press.

I must confess, given what I know about the way Washington works today, if it were not for bloggers and leakers, I don't know where this country which I love so much would be.