Mowaffak Rubaie, Iraq's National Security Chief, has this in the Los Angeles Times.
N THE AMERICAN media, Iraq's steady progress toward security is frequently overshadowed by news of the latest act of mass terrorism. Yet for those of us who actually live here, progress is visible to all but the most irreconcilable skeptics. Just this week, Ashraf Jehangir Qazi, the United Nations' special representative for Iraq, announced at a news conference in Baghdad that Iraq had achieved, or at least started to achieve, 75% of the benchmarks it set for itself in the U.N.-led International Compact with Iraq.
The military force increase by the United States called "the surge" is only one element in the Iraqi and coalition strategy. The other elements are the political/diplomatic initiatives and economic progress — and the reality is that the strategy is working in spite of the monumental obstacles presented by international terrorists and difficult conditions inside Iraq.
Iraqi and coalition security forces are having major success against Al Qaeda and some of the other groups that are the principal sources of the violence that aims to overthrow our young democracy. From Al Anbar to Diyala, from Nineveh to Basra, the atrocities of the terrorists against our people are backfiring, and our citizens are coming forward to offer themselves to counter them.
Now it is Mr. Rubaie's job to put the best case for his government's efforts. But to judge that case, you would have to pay some attention to what is really going on in Iraq. So far as one can tell, the Democrats aren't the least bit interested. When a group of Democrats at a press conference were asked how many troops they proposed to leave in Iraq, after the pullout that they advocate, they refused to say. And I refer the reader to Mr. Heppler's post below. Here is the quote from the Washington Post:
The decision of Democrats led by Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (Nev.) to deny rather than nourish a bipartisan agreement is, of course, irresponsible. But so was Mr. Reid's answer when he was asked by the Los Angeles Times how the United States should manage the explosion of violence that the U.S. intelligence community agrees would follow a rapid pullout. "That's a hypothetical. I'm not going to get into it," the paper quoted the Democratic leader as saying.
The Democrats, and some Republicans, are very interested in the effect that their policy proposals will have on the next election. They are not the least bit interested in actually forming a policy, or in what effect that policy might have on the Iraqi people or on the security interests of the United States. What might it mean to let a nation with a third of the world's crude oil supply fall into the hands of Al Qaeda or an Iranian controlled militia? Don't ask Harry Reid. He hasn't thought about it.
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