Ralph Peters mocks the other MSM Big Lie of the past week.

I’M trying. I’ve been trying all week. The other day, I drove another 30 miles or so on the streets and alleys of Baghdad. I’m looking for the civil war that The New York Times declared. And I just can’t find it.

Maybe actually being on the ground in Iraq prevents me from seeing it. Perhaps the view’s clearer from Manhattan. It could be that my background as an intelligence officer didn’t give me the right skills.

And riding around with the U.S. Army, looking at things first-hand, is certainly a technique to which The New York Times wouldn’t stoop in such an hour of crisis.

Ralph Peters, reporting from Iraq, says the MSM lies:

The reporting out of Baghdad continues to be hysterical and dishonest. There is no civil war in the streets. None. Period.

Terrorism, yes. Civil war, no. Clear enough?

Yesterday, I crisscrossed Baghdad, visiting communities on both banks of the Tigris and logging at least 25 miles on the streets. With the weekend curfew lifted, I saw traffic jams, booming business — and everyday life in abundance.

Yes, there were bombings yesterday. The terrorists won’t give up on their dream of sectional strife, and know they can count on allies in the media as long as they keep the images of carnage coming. They’ll keep on bombing. But Baghdad isn’t London during the Blitz, and certainly not New York on 9/11.

It’s more like a city suffering a minor, but deadly epidemic. As in an epidemic, no one knows who will be stricken. Rich or poor, soldier or civilian, Iraqi or foreigner. But life goes on. No one’s fleeing the Black Death — or the plague of terror.

And the people here have been impressed that their government reacted effectively to last week’s strife, that their soldiers and police brought order to the streets. The transition is working.

Most Iraqis want better government, better lives — and democracy. It is contagious, after all. Come on over. Talk to them. Watch them risk their lives every day to work with us or with their government to build their own future.

Oh, the attacks will continue. They’re even predictable, if not always preventable. Driving through Baghdad’s Kerada Peninsula District, my humvee passed long gas lines as people waited to fill their tanks in the wake of the curfew. I commented to the officer giving me a lift that the dense lines of cars and packed gas stations offered great targets to the terrorists. An hour later, one was hit with a car bomb.

The bombing made headlines (and a news photographer just happened to be on the scene). Here in Baghdad, it just made the average Iraqis hate the terrorists even more.

You are being lied to. By elements in the media determined that Iraq must fail. Just give ’em the Bronx cheer.

Hat tip to Dr. Sanity.

Guillermo Christenson replies with devastating results to Paul Pillar’s recent attack on the Bush Administration in Foreign Affairs:

CIA officers on the cusp of retirement often enroll in a seminar that is supposed to help them adjust to life after the agency — teaching them, for example, how to write a resumé. I’ve begun to wonder if part of that program now includes a writing seminar on how to beat up on the Bush administration. The latest such blast comes from Paul Pillar, who, over the course of his long career, was arguably a central player in the CIA’s analysis of the Middle East, in particular Iraq. But now Mr. Pillar has decided to disclose to the world, in a recent article in Foreign Affairs, that he thought all along that the war was a bad idea, and that the president and his advisers ignored his intelligence.

Why Mr. Pillar would even attempt to argue that the White House ignored the CIA’s intelligence is beyond me — as innumerable investigations have demonstrated, all of the “intelligence” within his responsibility was 100% in agreement that Iraq posed a serious danger and that it had an active program for acquiring WMD. Over the course of a decade and a half, and thousands of pages of intelligence analysis, it is hard to think of anyone in the government who was more directly involved in reaching the wrong conclusions about what was going on in Iraq than Mr. Pillar himself.

But let’s put all that aside for the moment and conjecture that Mr. Pillar actually did change his mind about all that work he’d done, and that he really did think the intelligence didn’t support the case for war. If that was truly so, no one was better positioned to make the case against war within the government than Mr. Pillar himself. He could have personally drafted a National Intelligence Estimate, or any number of other types of memoranda, for senior readers in government, recording for all in black and white what was really going on in Iraq. He could, furthermore, have shared that analysis with every single member of Congress by writing less-classified summaries of the conclusions, as is often done.

So why did Mr. Pillar fail to take these steps? Again, as the person in charge of assessing Iraq, if he really believed that Iraq posed no threat to the U.S., we’re owed an explanation of why none of the consequences of going to war — economic costs, military and civilian casualties — were important enough for him to do something about it when it mattered. According to Mr. Pillar, it was only a year into the war that such an analysis was even undertaken, and then only at the request of the administration. The other major intelligence estimate performed before the war was the 2002 NIE on WMD, “infamous,” as Mr. Pillar calls it, because it was so wrong.

The fact is, no other issue in the history of the CIA is as deserving of the title “Mother of all Intelligence Failures” as the debacle over the CIA’s analysis of Iraq. Take your pick of the many studies that have tried to understand why the intelligence was so inaccurate, but the basic conclusion underlying all of them is the same: The CIA’s analysis and collection on Iraq was flat-out wrong over the course of many years — first in missing the fact that Iraq had WMD before the Gulf War, and then, well, you know the rest.

Paul Pillar was right in the thick of the process and substance that reached those conclusions. Had he actually written a warning to the administration against going to war before the war, his conclusions could not have rested on any of the CIA’s intelligence analysis, but instead on his own political views against the administration — something which he has made no bones about in discussions with think-tank audiences long before he left the agency. This, incidentally, is prohibited behavior according to the professional practices of the CIA, the equivalent of betraying attorney-client confidentiality.

Not merely content to have played a leading role in the Iraq intelligence failure, Mr. Pillar is now following in the footsteps of others like Michael Scheuer, in undermining whatever credibility and access the CIA still may have with policymakers. By violating his confidences, Mr. Pillar is ensuring that those who succeed him — those who are, I hope, trying to fix the many problems facing the CIA — will be even less likely to see any real impact from their work because the president and his advisers will be loath to trust them.

For decades, there has been a common understanding that CIA analysts play a role roughly analogous, for policymakers, to experts whose opinions are sought in confidence, such as lawyers or accountants. Presidents and their advisers have felt comfortable in relying on analysts, in theory at least, for unbiased information and conclusions — and for keeping their mouths shut about what they learn. Presidents, secretaries of state, and others have given the CIA access into the inner sanctum of policymaking in the belief that the CIA would not use the media or leaks to influence the outcome.

For a CIA officer to discard this neutral role and to inject himself in the political realm is plain wrong. It will end up making the CIA even less relevant than it is today — if that is possible.

Earlier Post

From the Mayor of Tall’Afar, Iraq:

In the Name of God the Compassionate and Merciful

To the Courageous Men and Women of the 3d Armored Cavalry Regiment, who have changed the city of Tall’ Afar from a ghost town, in which terrorists spread death and destruction, to a secure city flourishing with life.

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.

To those who spread smiles on the faces of our children, and gave us restored hope, through their personal sacrifice and brave fighting, and gave new life to the city after hopelessness darkened our days, and stole our confidence in our ability to reestablish our city.

Our city was the main base of operations for Abu Mousab Al Zarqawi. The city was completely held hostage in the hands of his henchmen. Our schools, governmental services, businesses and offices were closed. Our streets were silent, and no one dared to walk them. Our people were barricaded in their homes out of fear; death awaited them around every corner. Terrorists occupied and controlled the only hospital in the city. Their savagery reached such a level that they stuffed the corpses of children with explosives and tossed them into the streets in order to kill grieving parents attempting to retrieve the bodies of their young. This was the situation of our city until God prepared and delivered unto them the courageous soldiers of the 3d Armored Cavalry Regiment, who liberated this city, ridding it of Zarqawi’s followers after harsh fighting, killing many terrorists, and forcing the remaining butchers to flee the city like rats to the surrounding areas, where the bravery of other 3d ACR soldiers in Sinjar, Rabiah, Zumar and Avgani finally destroyed them.

I have met many soldiers of the 3d Armored Cavalry Regiment; they are not only courageous men and women, but avenging angels sent by The God Himself to fight the evil of terrorism.

The leaders of this Regiment; COL McMaster, COL Armstrong, LTC Hickey, LTC Gibson, and LTC Reilly embody courage, strength, vision and wisdom. Officers and soldiers alike bristle with the confidence and character of knights in a bygone era. The mission they have accomplished, by means of a unique military operation, stands among the finest military feats to date in Operation Iraqi Freedom, and truly deserves to be studied in military science. This military operation was clean, with little collateral damage, despite the ferocity of the enemy. With the skill and precision of surgeons they dealt with the terrorist cancers in the city without causing unnecessary damage.

God bless this brave Regiment; God bless the families who dedicated these brave men and women. From the bottom of our hearts we thank the families. They have given us something we will never forget. To the families of those who have given their holy blood for our land, we all bow to you in reverence and to the souls of your loved ones. Their sacrifice was not in vain. They are not dead, but alive, and their souls hovering around us every second of every minute. They will never be forgotten for giving their precious lives. They have sacrificed that which is most valuable. We see them in the smile of every child, and in every flower growing in this land. Let America, their families, and the world be proud of their sacrifice for humanity and life.

Finally, no matter how much I write or speak about this brave Regiment, I haven’t the words to describe the courage of its officers and soldiers. I pray to God to grant happiness and health to these legendary heroes and their brave families.

NAJIM ABDULLAH ABID AL-JIBOURI
Mayor of Tall ‘Afar, Ninewa, Iraq

Hat tip to Greyhawk. I’ll bet most of the right half of the blogosphere quotes this one.

Let’s see, how does it go?

“Bush lied, people died.” “We made a mistake.” “We now know there were no Iraqi WMDs.” The left has assidulously erected an imaginary alternative reality for itself, in which (just like anthropogenic Global Warming) the unlikely thesis that “Saddam had no WMD” has been elevated to the level of an accepted fact. These days, it’s even easy to find Republicans who happen to read the MSM or watch television too much, and who have consequently succumbed to accepting this on the basis of the endless repetition of the same Big Lie.

It’s been obvious enough all along, I would argue. Saddam moved his entire air force to the territory of his former adversary Iran, rather than lose it to US attacks during the first Gulf War. The precedent for cross-border withdrawal to safe asylum of precious Iraqi weapons is all too clear.

And I’m not the only one aware of all this, as we reported here in December, Israeli Lieutenant General Moshe Yaalon, former chief of staff of the Israeli Defense Force, told the New York Sun over dinner in New York that Saddam spirited his chemical weapons out of the country on the eve of the war. “He transferred the chemical agents from Iraq to Syria. No one went to Syria to find [them].”

And today the same New York Sun, reports that Iraqi former top military advisor to Saddam Hussein and second-in-command of the Iraqi Air Force, General Georges Sada reveals his own knowledge of the transfer of chemical WMD in his new book, Saddam’s Secrets.

two Iraqi Airways Boeings were converted to cargo planes by removing the seats, Mr. Sada said. Then Special Republican Guard brigades loaded materials onto the planes, he said, including “yellow barrels with skull and crossbones on each barrel.” The pilots said there was also a ground convoy of trucks.

The flights – 56 in total, Mr. Sada said – attracted little notice because they were thought to be civilian flights providing relief from Iraq to Syria, which had suffered a flood after a dam collapse in June of 2002.

“Saddam realized, this time, the Americans are coming,” Mr. Sada said. “They handed over the weapons of mass destruction to the Syrians.”

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I thought I was early on this one, but I find that Rick Moran has already responded at length, and is collecting comments by the Blogospheric Right.

UPI is publishing a puzzling report alleging that the 43 year old German archaeologist recently kidnapped by terrorists in Iraq is really a German Intelligence agent:

WASHINGTON — Susanne Osthoff, the German archaeologist kidnapped by Iraqi gunmen on November 25 and released before Christmas was connected with her country’s intelligence service, the BND, and had helped arrange a meeting with a top member of the terrorist organization Al Qaeda, possibly Abu Mussab Al Zarqawi himself, according to well informed German sources.

The sources on January 7 confirmed German press reports that the 43-year-old woman had worked for the BND in Iraq on a freelance basis, and had for some time even stayed in a German intelligence safe house in Baghdad.

A convert to Islam and a fluent Arabic speaker, Osthoff had lived in Iraq for over a decade, and was at one time married to an Iraqi.

Archeology is a classic intelligence cover: T.E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia) posed as an archeologist in the Middle East in the early part of the last century. But archeology is Osthoff’s real profession. One Washington-based German source said Osthoff had been working on arranging a rendezvous with an Al Qaeda member on behalf of a German intelligence agent in Iraq.

Germany is believed to have paid a ransom for Osthoff’s release, consisting, at least in part, of the release of the Hizbullah terrorist Mohammed Ali Hamadi, who murdered US Navy diver Robert Dean Strethem in 1985.

Upon her release, Osthoff gave a peculiar and incoherent interview on German public television, dressed in a black Islamic head covering concealing everything but her eyes, in which she expressed sympathy for her kidnappers and asserted that she had been well-treated.

The Mirror is reporting on warning information being distributed in British military camps in Iraq:

AL-QAEDA is recruiting suicide bombers who are infected with the AIDS virus, according to documents revealed to the Sunday Mirror.

Terror chiefs are also targeting fanatics who suffer other lethal blood diseases such as hepatitis and dengue fever in order to increase their “kill rate” from an explosion. The chilling new threat is revealed in papers distributed to British military camps in Iraq and across Europe.

Under the heading “HIV/Hepatitis” the document states: “There is evidence that terrorists might be deliberately recruiting volunteers with diseases that are spread by blood transference.”

Experts have found that bones and other blood-spattered fragments from a suicide bomber could penetrate the skin of a victim 50 metres away and infect them.

Stephen F. Hayes in the Weekly Standard reveals that a treasure trove of up-to-now unreleased captured Iraqi documents and photographs provide clear refutation of one cornerstone position of critics of the US invasion — the belief that the secular Baathist regime of Saddam Hussein would never work with radical Islamist organizations:

THE FORMER IRAQI REGIME OF Saddam Hussein trained thousands of radical Islamic terrorists from the region at camps in Iraq over the four years immediately preceding the U.S. invasion, according to documents and photographs recovered by the U.S. military in postwar Iraq. The existence and character of these documents has been confirmed to THE WEEKLY STANDARD by eleven U.S. government officials.

The secret training took place primarily at three camps–in Samarra, Ramadi, and Salman Pak–and was directed by elite Iraqi military units. Interviews by U.S. government interrogators with Iraqi regime officials and military leaders corroborate the documentary evidence. Many of the fighters were drawn from terrorist groups in northern Africa with close ties to al Qaeda, chief among them Algeria’s GSPC and the Sudanese Islamic Army. Some 2,000 terrorists were trained at these Iraqi camps each year from 1999 to 2002, putting the total number at or above 8,000. Intelligence officials believe that some of these terrorists returned to Iraq and are responsible for attacks against Americans and Iraqis…

The discovery of the information on jihadist training camps in Iraq would seem to have two major consequences: It exposes the flawed assumptions of the experts and U.S. intelligence officials who told us for years that a secularist like Saddam Hussein would never work with Islamic radicals, any more than such jihadists would work with an infidel like the Iraqi dictator. It also reminds us that valuable information remains buried in the mountain of documents recovered in Afghanistan and Iraq over the past four years.

Nearly three years after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, only 50,000 of these 2 million “exploitable items” have been thoroughly examined. That’s 2.5 percent.

Apparently, opinions on releasing the material were fiercely divided within Congress and the Bush Administration. Many were eager to release nearly all of the massive collection of information, but some influential officials of the Defense Department, having been burned before, feared that the

mainstream press might cherry-pick documents and mischaracterize their meaning. “There is always the concern that people would be chasing a lot of information good or bad, and when the Times or the Post splashes a headline about some sensational-sounding document that would seem to ‘prove’ that sanctions were working, or that Saddam was just a misunderstood patriot, or some other nonsense, we’d spend a lot of time chasing around after it.”

The Telegraph reports:

Gazing through the telescopic sight of his M24 rifle, Staff Sgt Jim Gilliland, leader of Shadow sniper team, fixed his eye on the Iraqi insurgent who had just killed an American soldier.

His quarry stood nonchalantly in the fourth-floor bay window of a hospital in battle-torn Ramadi, still clasping a long-barrelled Kalashnikov. Instinctively allowing for wind speed and bullet drop, Shadow’s commander aimed 12 feet high.

A single shot hit the Iraqi in the chest and killed him instantly. It had been fired from a range of 1,250 meters (1367 yards), well beyond the capacity of the powerful Leupold sight, accurate to 1,000 metres.

“I believe it is the longest confirmed kill in Iraq with a 7.62mm rifle,” said Staff Sgt Gilliland, 28, who hunted squirrels in Double Springs, Alabama from the age of five before progressing to deer – and then people.

“He was visible only from the waist up. It was a one in a million shot. I could probably shoot a whole box of ammunition and never hit him again.”

Later that day, Staff Sgt Gilliland found out that the dead soldier was Staff Sgt Jason Benford, 30, a good friend.

The insurgent was one of between 55 and 65 he estimates that he has shot dead in less than five months, putting him within striking distance of sniper legends such as Carlos Hathcock, who recorded 93 confirmed kills in Vietnam.

M24 Rifle manufactured by Remington.

Leupold scopes.

Carlos Hathcock.
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Isn’t it ironic that the British Telegraph is covering this remarkable feat of American arms, and the American so-called “newspaper of record” is too busy betraying its country to cover such a story?

We missed this earlier. Gateway Pundit assembles an interesting collection of charts and data.

Hat tip to Dr. Sanity’s Canival of Insanities.

Today’s must-read posting on Mudville Gazette of Robert Stokely’s observations on the meaning of his son’s Michael’s death last August in Iraq, the eloquent response of a decent and honorable man to the Cindy Sheehans of this world.

Linked by both Glenn Reynolds and Charles Johnson. There are some posts we think it obligatory to link, even if everyone else has already linked them.

“More Iraqis think things are going well in Iraq than Americans do. I guess they don’t get the New York Times over there.”—Jay Leno