Doug Ross @ Journal

Iraq: All but Won

The invaluable Jack Kelly of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette   nailed the mainstream media to the wall with his Sunday op-ed. His contention? The war in Iraq is all but won. He compares the situation to the battle of Iwo Jima: though the outcome was clear after five days, it took 35 days before the island could be declared secure.

Need proof? Well, when Hillary Clinton jumps on the bandwagon, you can be pretty sure the situation is safe. A politico with her experience wouldn't touch that kind of hot potato unless it was stuffed with green by John Huang (oops, did I say that out loud?). Hillary's remarks, including the fact that Iraq is functioning quite well, pretty much sums it up.

Blogger Austin Bay, a retired colonel in the Army reserve who served in Iraq last year, blames the public's disconnect on (surprise!) the MSM's unbalanced reporting. He notes that thousands of truckloads of material arrive in Iraq every day from Kuwait and Turkey and, once in a while, the insurgents get lucky and blow one up. That single flaming rig will dominate CNN's coverage for hours... without telling American viewers what's really occurring on the ground.

Lt. Col. Jim Stockmoe, chief intelligence officer for the First Infantry Division, roared with laughter as he recalled the increasing missteps of the resistance in Iraq in an interview earlier this month with British journalist Toby Harnden, writing for The Spectator. "There were three brothers down in Baghdad who had a mortar tube and were firing into the Green Zone," Stockmoe said. "They were storing the mortar rounds in the car engine compartment and the rounds got overheated. Two of these clowns dropped them in the tube and they exploded, blowing their legs off." The surviving brother sought refuge in a nearby house, but the occupants "beat the crap out of him and turned him over to the Iraqi police," Stockmoe told Harnden, "It was like the movie 'Dumb and Dumber.' " ... ...The number of insurgent attacks has fallen off significantly since the Fallujah offensive last November, and the attacks that are being made are less effective. There are about 50-60 attacks a day on coalition forces, about half the pre-Fallujah level. Almost all are within the Sunni Triangle, and most are ineffective. "Most of these are ambush-style attacks that result in no casualties," noted StrategyPage...

Jack Kelly: All but won - The media can't see that Iraq is close to secure