Optimist

Once again we have conflicting polls being reported. Buck posted some interesting info on a positive poll done in Iraq saying:
The poll, the biggest since coalition troops entered Iraq on March 20, 2003, shows that by a majority of two to one, Iraqis prefer the current leadership to Saddam Hussein’s regime, regardless of the security crisis and a lack of public services.

Acute Politics had the London Times link that reported these positive statistics. Then this morning while listening to Good Morning America, they reported statistics from their own poll saying that only 42% of Iraqis are happy with the new regime. I find it interesting that our MSM reports so negatively on the war in Iraq. Surely, ABC News is aware of the London Times poll. Why do they choose to report only the negative statistics? You know me. I think that one-sided, negative reporting is the equivalent to Tokyo Rose type aiding of the enemy. Op-for had some good points to make on “The Long War”. Now is a good time to post a recent letter from my Marine cousin. I like his positive attitude:

Gang,

Back at the house. What an adventure. I’ll follow up soon. Quick summary. My battalion cleared a zone with about 1500 houses, we found over 30 IEDs (about 4 by me personally) multiple weapons caches and a huge IED factory with about 2500 lbs of explosives…which at the time we didn’t know was homemade explosives and we detonated it in the city which ended up hurting about 31 civilians and made a 30 x 60 foot crater in the ground – long story, but fortunately no deaths and we turned it into a huge win for us as the locals know that all those explosives were brought in by the enemy. Col Ali and his guys are simply amazing. I was at ground zero for the mass casualty – pretty amazing situation. It was on the news back home CNN, Fox, etc. Some type of report of a large explosion in Ramadi – that was us. I was in a building 50m away and thought the bld was coming down…amazing. We found so many IEDs I lost track of them. I found one huge IED that would have split a tank in two.

We seized one building for a new outpost and had some intelligence that it was rigged to blow by the AIF, so I sent the jundis in from the second floor. Sure enough – 15 X propane tanks spread throughout the building waiting for us to enter. We now own that building and 48 hours later had 100 plus concrete barriers around it with 2 x platoons of feisty IAs to hold the ground we took back. The people of the Malaab are thrilled. We pushed out insurgents and removed IEDs that were literally paralyzing the people. One family, after our guys removed a huge IED that was placed next to their house, ran out, hugged the EOD guys, gave them tea and said they’d lived in fear for months because they knew that if that IED went off, it would probably destroy their home. Amazing, amazing stories. We handed out over 500 bags of food/supplies, hundreds of liters of fuel, 40+ generators, and enough good will and handshakes to last a long time.

If I could capture the essence of the often cited “winning the hearts and minds” well, that’s what we did – now we must hold them – and the enemy is already pushing back. Some mortars landed 25meters from my convoy today as we left our new outpost. I went back later in the day with Col Ali and we found the impact site – right in someone’s back yard – and oh, by the way their son was one of the 31 injured in our cache reduction.

More to follow – I wish I could sit down with you all and go on for hours. Thanks for the prayers. The team did amazingly well. We won this week – and it feels good.

Me