Meanwhile, back in Iraq...

[Darryl G. Thomas]

War? What war?
Until the recent flare-up in Najaf, Iraq had faded from the front pages -- despite continued carnage and chaos. Team Bush couldn't be happier.

- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Eric Boehlert

printe-mail

Aug. 12, 2004 | Despite arriving sooner than expected and catching much of the American press off guard, the June 28 hand-over of sovereignty in Iraq was trumpeted as a momentous event. That night CNN devoted its entire prime-time lineup to analyzing the brief, 15-minute ceremony in Baghdad. Fox News cheered it as "a day that will go down in history." Newspapers the next morning were clogged with reports from Iraq and speculation about what the transfer of political power would mean for the rebuilding of Iraq, as well as for the 140,000 U.S. troops serving there.

The hand-over, though, has done very little to change things for the better in Iraq. In the past six weeks, the country has been gripped in escalating violence, forcing some coalition countries and private contractors to flee for safety. Kidnappings by insurgents have multiplied, as have assassinations, while electricity still remains in short supply. Iraq's national conference -- critical to the eventual implementation of free elections -- has been postponed, and U.S. soldiers continue to die.

"On June 28, my feeling was nothing was going to change because of the hand-over," says Steven Cook, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. "There were still going to be car bombings and U.S. soldiers being killed, and that's exactly what's happened. Nothing has changed."

But one thing did change: U.S. press coverage of Iraq. The hand-over marked a turning point in the level and intensity of media interest, which sharply decreased, particularly on the 24-hour cable news channels. "Clearly the volume in press coverage has gone way down," says Cook. "'Sleepy' is a good word to describe it. The coverage doesn't compare with anything we'd seen during the previous 12 months from Iraq. The drop-off has been noticeable."

"From the very beginning this has been an administration that wanted to hide the toll of the war -- and the media have been absolutely complicit in that," says Nancy Lessin, co-founder of the antiwar group Military Families Speak Out. Lessin's stepson, a Marine, served in Iraq during the spring of 2003. "In April of this year, violence in Iraq was up and it was hard to keep the war off the front pages. But as soon as possible the pictures changed. Since June 28, [the war has] been off the front pages again."

More recently, a week's worth of fierce fighting in Najaf between coalition forces and militant Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi army has begun to bring Iraq back into focus. And if U.S. forces unleash a frontal assault there, Iraq will once again dominate the headlines, as it so often has in the past 18 months. "We're still interested in the story. We're on the air every night about Iraq," says Marcy McGinnis, senior vice president of news at CBS. "But what's happened is, interest in the political scene has increased. News always ebbs and flows, and at times it may appear Iraq is taking a back seat to politics because that's what's in the news right now."

Following the ebb-and-flow theory, Iraq is likely to return to the media forefront, however temporarily, when the one thousandth U.S. soldier dies in Iraq. Based on the current fatality rate, that somber event could happen as soon as late September.

Still, considered as a whole from July 1 to the present, coverage of Iraq seems to have diminished. "It's incredible how the press has veered away from Iraq" since June 28, says Peter Singer, a national security fellow at the Brookings Institution. Last week "six U.S. soldiers were killed in 24 hours, and there was nothing. If you're President Bush and you see headlines about Martha Stewart and Laci Peterson, you've got to count yourself lucky, because that means the focus is no longer on Iraq."

The physical danger reporters face inside Iraq has clearly curbed their efforts to report more. And for editors and producers back in America, trying to find a way to make the repetitive nature of the events in Iraq compelling remains a challenge. "One can imagine editors saying, 'Gee, we just did a roadside bombing story yesterday,'" says Singer. "But that's how an insurgency works; it's the same attack over and over."

That fatigue among members of the press corps makes it less likely that the daily violence in Iraq will be considered newsworthy. "I covered the bombing of the U.N. headquarters in Baghdad in August of 2003, and that was a shock," says Ken Dilanian, a staff writer for the Philadelphia Inquirer who has spent several months reporting from Iraq in the past year. "As I recall, CNN broke into its regular programming live and stayed with it all day. That was with 24 people dead. Nowadays that happens every week, and it's on Page A14."

Press fatigue "was bound to set in," agrees Cook. "But it is uncanny how it occurred right after the change in sovereignty on June 28."

The media's shift away from Iraq is good news for the White House, which has watched American sentiment turn decisively against the war and specifically against President Bush's handling of the ongoing military effort. "Without question, the Bush administration is better off with no news from Iraq," says Larry Diamond, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution who served in Baghdad as an advisor to the Coalition Provisional Authority last spring.

Now the administration is much more interested in ushering the war on terror back into the foreground, while shuffling Iraq into the background. "Terrorism news trumps Iraq news for Bush," says Juan Cole, a professor of modern Middle Eastern history at the University of Michigan. The emphasis on terrorism news fits with Bush's poll results. Fifty-two percent of Americans approve of how Bush is handling the war on terror, compared with just 37 approving of his actions in Iraq, according to the latest CBS poll.

So far, the White House's choreography is working as planned, particularly on cable TV, which is feasting on fresh terror warnings at home while giving just token attention to Iraq. So are newspapers like the New York Post. On Aug. 7, under the banner headline "War on Terror," the Post spread 11 stories over five pages detailing the "Crackdown on Qaeda Creeps." The Post ran just a single article that day about the situation in Iraq. Readers might be getting the impression that Iraq is as irrelevant as Afghanistan has become.

Yet the diminished attention to Iraq has created an odd media disconnect. While most pundits agree Iraq will be a key issue in November, Americans are being exposed to less reporting and analysis about the war. "There's an inverse relationship in press coverage and the situation in Iraq," says Cook. "It's amazing; the press has grown weary of reporting the same story regardless of how important it is. It is the issue in the campaign."

For example, in the wake of the sovereignty hand-over, NBC's "Meet the Press" discussed Iraq in depth during its July 4 telecast, featuring Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., and Sen. John Warner, R-Va., who spent nearly 20 minutes on the topic. In the five weeks since that broadcast, however, the show has not once matched that degree of focus on Iraq. Instead, when the topic is addressed it's invariably in a domestic political context: How will Iraq affect the U.S. election? What's actually happening in Iraq has much less salience. (On the Aug. 8 broadcast of "Meet the Press," National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice was asked 18 questions; only three were about Iraq, and none were related to current events there.)

Ironically, after the Democrats' convention in Boston, "Meet the Press" host Tim Russert, suggesting it was the Democrats who were not anxious to raise the war issue, asserted that Iraq was "the 800-pound elephant in the room that people don't want to talk about." Yet it is "Meet the Press" itself, along with much more of the mainstream press, that has become increasingly fascinated with domestic politics and indifferent to the war.

The political ramifications of the media's recent sluggishness are significant because, aside from military families, most Americans don't have a direct connection with the war. How the press plays -- or downplays -- Iraq between now and November "will have a profound impact on the election," says Phil Trounstine, director of the Survey and Policy Research Institute at San Jose State University. "Less coverage would be good for the president," he observes.

A recent survey conducted by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press suggests a direct link between reporting on Iraq (or how people treat the news from Iraq) and Bush's political fortunes. During the month of June, just 39 percent of Americans paid very close attention to the news coming out of Iraq, the lowest rate for all of 2004. Over the same period, the survey found, Americans' opinion of Bush, as well as of the situation in Iraq, improved noticeably. On July 14, ABC News' the Note -- the online roundup of the day's must-reads for political junkies -- theorized: "The Bush campaign is counting on the continued absence of a drumbeat of bad news out of Iraq to improve right track/wrong track" polling numbers.

Was there really an absence of bad news from Iraq? Nearly three dozen G.I.'s were killed during the first two weeks of July. On that same July 14 day, Iraq erupted in a new wave of violence. A suicide attacker detonated a massive car bomb near the British Embassy, killing 11 and wounding 40. An insurgent group, probably led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, announced it had beheaded a Bulgarian hostage. Five Iraqis were killed and 21 insurgents were wounded in fierce fighting in the Iraqi city of Ramadi. Insurgents killed the governor of Mosul as he was driving in a convoy of vehicles. A gunman assassinated the director general of Iraq's Industry Ministry as he left his Baghdad home. Meanwhile, two G.I.'s were killed that day when their vehicle rolled over.

Few if any of those deadly incidents on July 14 received sustained cable news coverage in America; instead the congressional vote on same-sex marriage was the preferred topic of the day.

The next day, canvassing the media landscape for stories that might affect the November election, the Note made no reference to the carnage in Iraq. Since June 28, that has often been the case with the Note, which perhaps better than any other site accurately captures the shifting moods and priorities of Washington's political press corps. For instance, on July 22, the Note linked to 116 separate stories, drawn from 23 quasi-political categories (9/11 commission, national security, the economy, same-sex marriage, etc.). Not one of them had to do with events in Iraq. And that was just 24 hours after an audacious bombing by insurgents of a Baghdad police station, a deadly attack that was completely overshadowed on cable news outlets by the story that former National Security Advisor Sandy Berger had been under investigation -- for nearly six months -- for breaching protocol at the National Archives while reviewing documents in preparation for the 9/11 commission hearings.

Television wasn't alone in downplaying the police station bombing story. While the Washington Times and the Washington Post both put the attack on Page 1, scores of major-market dailies, including the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Arizona Republic, Denver Post, Hartford Courant, Indianapolis Star, New York Times and San Jose Mercury News, kept the story off the front page.

A recent check of the Note on Aug. 2 indicated more of the same: 83 story links in 15 categories, none of them dealing with Iraq. Yet voters are told by the press that come November, the issue of Iraq may very well decide the election.

After June 28, the line about there being "no bad news" from Iraq even seeped into reported pieces. On July 21, the New York Times, in a campaign trail dispatch, noted that one key factor that may work in Bush's favor in November is that "in Iraq, the transfer of sovereignty has led to some reduction in American casualties." But, in fact, nearly as many U.S. soldiers lost their lives in Iraq during the first half of July alone as did during the entire month of June. Of the 15 months since major combat ended, July ranks as the fourth deadliest for U.S. soldiers serving in Iraq. And if August's current fatality rate continues, it will easily claim more American lives than July did.

So why does the press act as if the hand-over of sovereignty has changed the situation on the ground? "It seems the mainstream press has bought in to the White House line about June 28 -- 'OK, we're in a new phase,'" says Lessin of Military Families Speak Out. "But we still have 138,000 troops there and are occupying a country. It hasn't changed. If it has changed, it's increased the violence in many areas. Then again, the press has [always] been in the lap of the administration, and once again it's playing its role of lapdog."

CBS News executive McGinnis denies that charge. "We have 22 minutes [on the "CBS Evening News"] and we pick and choose the stories each night. We make subjective editorial choices every single day, and we're not making them on how to help or hurt George Bush or John Kerry. The decisions [about Iraq] are based on what's happening in Iraq that day."

Of course, major news organizations are still covering Iraq and spending extraordinary resources -- both human and financial -- to keep Americans informed. The major dailies, as well as the nightly network news broadcasts, still dutifully report the developments in Iraq. On Aug. 6, for instance, USA Today ran a long Page 1 account about new fighting in Iraq, while "NBC Nightly News" opened its broadcast with a similar report.

But since the hand-over in Iraq, a certain intensity, or urgency, has been missing from the coverage -- a reluctance to go beyond the day's random bombings, kidnappings and shootings.

To be sure, the 24-hour cable shows are the news outlets that have ratcheted down their Iraq reporting the most over the past six weeks. That became glaringly obvious during the Democratic National Convention in Boston, where many pundits and producers spent much of the time ignoring the politics and bemoaning how little actual news there was to report. Yet here's a small sampling of what happened in Iraq that same week, little of which was deemed newsworthy enough to seriously interrupt the endless, repetitive cable TV discussion about swing voters and Teresa Heinz Kerry's "shove it" remark:

# July 26: Attackers shot and killed Iraq's senior Interior Ministry official and two of his bodyguards in a drive-by shooting.

# July 26: A suicide bomber detonated a car filled with explosives, mortars and rockets near the gates of a U.S. base in Mosul, killing three.

# July 27: The dead body of a kidnapped Turkish truck driver was found.

# July 27: One Iraqi was killed and 14 coalition soldiers were injured when a mortar hit a Baghdad residential district.

# July 28: A car bomb exploded on a busy boulevard in Baquba, killing 68 people and wounding nearly 100. The attack stood as the deadliest insurgent strike since the U.S. occupation began last year.

# July 28: Seven Iraqi soldiers and 35 insurgents were killed during a firefight in Suwariyah.

# July 29: Reeling from the violence and a wave of kidnappings, Iraqi officials once again postponed a three-day national conference to choose an interim assembly in preparation for the country's first elections.

Experts say that week was typical of the chaos that has transpired in Iraq this summer, with or without the spotlight of the U.S. press shining on the region. "Iraq remains very much in the balance. That's the only fair assessment you can make right now," says Brookings' Singer.

"I've talked to friends who served in the CPA, and I don't know anybody with on-the-ground experience in Iraq who doesn't think the situation there isn't completely screwed up," adds Cook.

"Iraqis are so embittered and [have] completely lost any faith in us, even the most pro-American Iraqis," says the Philadelphia Inquirer's Dilanian, who says he has had a profound change of heart on the topic. Last April, fresh from reporting in Iraq, an optimistic Dilanian wrote that the press was ignoring improvements in Iraq and underplaying the chance for a real turnaround. In late June he returned to Baghdad to cover the sovereignty hand-over. Summing up his new grim impressions in an Aug. 1 article, Dilanian admitted his earlier prediction was wrong and wrote, "The situation in Iraq right now is not as bad as the news media are portraying it to be. It's worse. Most Iraqis aren't seeing the improvements they had hoped for, and they're not blaming the guerrillas -- they're blaming the Americans. Sovereignty seems to have had zero effect on this equation."

That's the key story many American news outlets have missed since June 28.

[Dr Dave]

When some resistance group manages to kill a bunch of Marines at once, Iraq will be back in the news.

I find it somewhat disconcerting that both Shia and Sunni--mortal enemies in the struggle for power in Iraq--are killing Americans. I hope this isn't what the Administration means when it talks about "unifying" Iraq.

[Monte Smith]

Funny, I still see Iraq on every front page I happen to glance at.

[bluenoter]

I'll tell you what words have disappeared from the news reports (except for rare appearances) and are never, never spoken by Bush:

Afghanistan
Osama bin Laden
Mullah Omar
Taliban
anthrax

[Monte Smith]

Balls. Afghanistan is still good copy, if only because of the elections that we hope will be happening successfully in September. Although I do understand that the anti-war activists don't read foreign dispatches much, preferring homegrown protests to global engagement.

But the prospect of forgetting who Osama bin Laden is seems rather small. On the other hand, can anyone tell me who Khalid Sheik Muhammad is?

[Dr Dave]

My favorite handle for Khalid is "the Forrest Gump of terrorism," a sobriquet awarded him by spooks far and wide, because he is said to have a role in nearly every major terrorist attack ('98 embassy bombings, 9/11, etc.). The Pakistanis have at various times claimed to have killed him, but apparently not so.

You could have gleaned all this yourself, Monte, with a quick Google search, like I did. And your point is....?

[Monte Smith]

No, the Pakistanis have apparently not killed Khalid Sheik Muhammad, Dave, and it is a small mystery why not. He is in US custody and has been for a year or so. And I don't know who called him "Forrest Gump," but the Financial Times called him the CEO of Terrorism and the Washington Post called him the Mastermind of 9/11. His incarcerated nephew is the man the FBI holds responsible for the first WTC bombing, and his incarcerated other nephew is a man Pakistan (or maybe Britain) is holding for the serious threats two weeks ago on American financial institutions in NYC, NJ, and DC.

While some people will point to nothing and decry our lack of success in the war on terror, I will point to victories such as these and shot "Ah hah!"

[bluenoter]

Originally Posted by Monte Smith

On the other hand, can anyone tell me who Khalid Sheik Muhammad is?

Apparently not. This editorial is from Paknews.com, which one can visit to follow the links. Note the date.

http://paknews.com/editorials.php?id=1&date1=2003-03-04

Updated on 2003-03-04

Interrogating the dead Al-Qaida, or Are we Stupid?

Asim Mughal



There are shrill cries of success and sighs of relief surrounding a news report that is being hailed as the biggest catch so far: No.3 man, Sheikh Khalid Muhammad, of the dreaded Al Qaida is captured, alive! The biggest success in the global war against terrorism. This is certainly excellent news and both the Pakistani and the American authorities deserve congratulations.

Unfortunately, while the coalition is claiming success, there is a run for taking the credit. The American version of the news from likes of CNN, Foxnews, MSNBC hardly mentions the Pakistani role and makes it sound like Sheikh Khalid Muhammad was captured somewhere in Texas, not from Rawalpindi. The Pakistani version earlier claimed this to be a joint operation but now it is claimed to be 100% Pakistani operation (News Link Mar 3, 2003).

The contradictions do not stop here. Americans claim that Sheikh Khalid Muhammad is in their custody and is now being interrogated for the second day. Whereas, the Pakistanis are saying that he has not been extradited to any country. Furthermre, it is being said that Sheikh Khalid will be extradited to Kuwait.

Now why Kuwait one asks? Sheikh Khalid Muhammad is being referred to as a citizen of anywhere from Kuwait, Pakistan, Yemen, up to holding 20 passports of different countries. What is his real nationality?

Now, about his role as the key planner of all past terrorism acts and all future acts. It is said that Khalid was the chief/key planner of 9/11 attacks? But wasn't that attributed to Osama Bin Laden? But wait! It was not too long ago that it was claimed that "key planner of the attacks on World Trade Centre and the Pentagon, Ramzi Bin al-Shibh" was arrested.

So, who is the real man?

A more troubling problem is that it was reported by both American and Pakistani authorities back in September 2002 that Sheikh Khalid Muhammad was killed in a raid. The reason we remember him vividly was the way his death was dramatized. He was reported as writing words on a wall with his own blood as he was dying ( News Link Sept 15, 2002).

It was reported a few days after the report of a raid that Khalid's wife and children were in custody and being interrogated. ( News Link Sept 20, 2002)

So, maybe all this very confusing to an average bunch of people like us, but perhaps someone can tell us who the real Sheikh Khalid Muhammad is? How can Sheikh Khalid Muhammad be in America, Pakistan and Kuwait at the same time? If he died in the gun battle on Sept 15, 2002 in Karachi, who has been raided and arrested on March 3, 2003?

We will all feel much safer when told the truth, rather than some raids and captures which do not add up, as it seems.

THOMAS OLIPHANT

The chaotic reality Bush faces in Iraq

By Thomas Oliphant, Globe Columnist
August 17, 2004

WASHINGTON
WITH INADEQUATE notice, the absurd linkage invented by President Bush to join "war in Iraq" with "war on terror" has fractured, raising the question not only whether anyone in his administration can explain what is going on but also whether anyone can explain what the United States is doing in Iraq.

The siege of Najaf and its sacred Shi'ite sites is hardly a military challenge. The Army and Marine units there can obviously crush all opposition and occupy the city whenever commanders choose. Instead, the siege is a political challenge that in the short run greatly increases the risk of more US combat deaths as commanders try to discern which masters they are serving, even as it calls into question the purpose of what remains a de facto occupation that is open-ended in terms of cost and duration.

This is a situation that the presidential campaign cannot illuminate or clarify. Wisely, Senator John Kerry avoids political commentary on each day's events, but because the situation is unfolding with such chaos, his longer-range thoughts about a smaller American and a larger international presence have no clear relevance. Bush may think his daily assaults on Kerry's capacity to be president are relevant, but except for the small sliver of voters addicted to cable television or affected by TV ad attacks, his campaign is not registering strongly with the public.

Most Americans appear to be concerned about the situation, doubtful about the wisdom of throwing money and military force at what is a mess, and increasingly convinced that this adventure is not worth its growing cost. There might be a case to be made, but the Bush administration is failing to make it.

There was a period following the fall of Saddam Hussein's dictatorship more than 16 months ago when what was then called "resistance" was attributed to diehard supporters of the deposed ruler and the foreign fighters and terrorists pouring through Iraq's undefended borders. Resistance, however, became "insurgency" months ago, and on some days it appears that the US occupation has managed to unite Sunni and Shi'ite communities in opposition to the US presence.

Military operations against insurgents north and south of Baghdad have been stopped short of successful completion as hostile elements have taken virtual control of a broad swath of the country. The issue is no longer terrorism; it is Iraq's post-Saddam future. Worse, the unifying political movement in Iraq increasingly seems to be opposition to the US presence in support of an interim government of our creation. Since the spring, an incompetent US administration has managed to let the issue become "us" as opposed to "them" -- a force the administration seems incapable of defining, much less countering.

What happened over the weekend concerning the siege of Najaf and related struggles in other cities should serve as a reminder of just how ridiculous the situation has become. As in the spring, offensive operations against a private army in the control of a militant have started, stopped, started, and stopped again, while Americans have been getting killed under rules of engagement that prevent them from following their most basic imperative -- suppressing fire directed at them. Offensive operations have been halted at least twice while Americans were told that elements of the new Iraqi armed forces were on the way to finish the most sensitive part of the job, only to find out that no one was coming and that there were no orders to finish the job. Worse, this chaos has unfolded under circumstances in which it has appeared that the interim government of the US-installed prime minister, Ayad Allawi, was making decisions about the deployment and use of American soldiers, which is the last thing you would expect a right-wing US administration to tolerate. It is bad enough to have to pretend that Allawi's government is truly sovereign, but if this is how the relationship is supposed to work, it is already a failure.

Sports allusions are always dangerous, but the ease with which the world can enjoy the success of the Iraqi soccer team in the Olympics is a revealing contrast to the reaction to the mess on the ground in Iraq.

President Bush's reelection is in doubt almost on the eve of his renomination, not yet because of Kerry but because of Bush's policies in the two most important areas of all -- the economy and national security. As long as events in the real world appear to be spiraling beyond his control, the urge to seek a fresh start is going to be strong.

The United States invaded Iraq to erase a threat that was misrepresented, and now the only people who want us to remain there, contrary to the misrepresentations of Bush and Dick Cheney, are the political "leaders" the United States forcibly installed.

[Monte Smith]

Yeah, blue. It's tough to imagine what is happening with this guy.

[/QUOTE]



But it is richly worth contemplating.

[BFrank]

... on the other hand



Iraq Injury Count Rose In August
U.S. Troops See Highest Toll Yet
By Karl Vick
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, September 5, 2004; Page A01

BAGHDAD, Sept. 4 -- About 1,100 U.S. soldiers and Marines were wounded in Iraq during August, by far the highest combat injury toll for any month since the war began and an indication of the intensity of battles flaring in urban areas.

U.S. medical commanders say the sharp rise in battlefield injuries reflects more than three weeks of fighting by two Army and one Marine battalion in the southern city of Najaf. At the same time, U.S. units frequently faced combat in a sprawling Shiite Muslim slum in Baghdad and in the Sunni cities of Fallujah, Ramadi and Samarra, all of which remain under the control of insurgents two months after the transfer of political authority.

"They were doing battlefield urban operations in four places at one time," said Lt. Col. Albert Maas, operations officer for the 2nd Medical Brigade, which oversees U.S. combat hospitals in Iraq. "It's like working in downtown Detroit. You're going literally building to building."

The sharp rise in wounded was, for the first time, accompanied by a far less steep climb in battlefield fatalities. Since the start of the war in March 2003, 979 U.S. troops have died in Iraq and almost 7,000 have been wounded. Until last month, however, the monthly tallies of fatalities and wounded rose and fell roughly in proportion.

In August, 66 U.S. service personnel were killed in Iraq, according to the Defense Department. The toll was the highest since May, when 80 fatalities were recorded. But it was well below the 135 U.S. combat deaths in April, when a sporadic guerrilla war that had largely been confined to the so-called Sunni Triangle north and west of Baghdad spread to cities across the previously quiescent Shiite Muslim belt in southern Iraq. The U.S. military does not routinely release the reported number of Iraqi casualties and wounded.

(continued)

[Gordon B]

Originally Posted by bluenoter

I'll tell you what words have disappeared from the news reports (except for rare appearances) and are never, never spoken by Bush:

Afghanistan
Osama bin Laden
Mullah Omar
Taliban
anthrax

That's not true at all.
Just today, the US State Department coordinator for anti-terrorism said that the net is tightening around OBL and that he will be captured soon.
There's been plenty on the Afghanistan elections, scheduled for January.
There was also a story recently about anthrax. The FBI is investigating a US person who might have mailed the anthrax to prove it could be easily done. I don't think that terrorism is thought to be behind the anthrax at all.
We probably don't care about Mullah Omar anymore. He's no longer the head of a state sponsoring terrorism.

[Gordon B]

Chris you might find comfort in Oliphant's article but the Iraqi view of Americans will turn overwhelmingly positive if and only if security comes to the country as well as basic necessities and of course the means to make a decent living without fear of kidnapping or death.

As long as Iraqis can't say they are better off then they were in March of 2003, they aren't going to be particularly grateful to the US government.

[Al in NYC]

Originally Posted by Gordon B

Just today, the US State Department coordinator for anti-terrorism said that the net is tightening around OBL and that he will be captured soon.

Right on schedule...

[Root Doctor]

I find it curious that people who feel that our military operations abroad are being mishandled are referred to as "anti-war." The truth of the matter is Afghanistan is far from the point where elections will be "successful," other than for Bush partisans. I'm sure warlords across the country are eager to respect the outcome at the ballot box. And how successful was our participation in Najaf, where Al-Jazeera broadcast images of US soldiers bombing and occupying an Islamic holy city all over the Arab world? I wonder what that flaming leftist Brent Scowcroft makes of it, or those wack-job anti-war simpletons at the Cato Institute.

[Dr Dave]

If Bush says it is so, It Is So!

[BFrank]

Originally Posted by Dr Dave

If Bush says it is so, It Is So!

Trust his WORDS not his actions