Powerline Blog And Iraq News

If you listen to the mainstream media (MSM), also known as ABC, CBS, NBC, New York Times, Washington Post, etc., you get nothing but lies and propoganda. I read 6 blogs every day, 3 liberal, and 3 conservative. That includes linking to the articles they use as source material, so it takes some time. These blog sites, which the MSM claims are biased, provide more honest news than any of the MSM, and even though it is posted with a point of view, if you read both sides of each story, one on the left and one on the right, the point of view is easy to filter out.

One of the most articulate and important of the conservative blogs is Powerline. I read them every day, but do not post articles from them, since it is so hard to link directly. However today I think it is important to cover their views on some of what is happening in the world. Since it is generally good news for our side in the war, you will not hear it on TV or see it in your newspaper.

[You can go to the web site and read the articles as originally posted right now, but as more postings happen they will scroll down. For that reason I have included the entire postings here so they will stay readable. However Powerline is a great site and I encourage everyone to read it regularly if you want to know the truth about what is happening in the world. ]

First are a couple postings about Al Quaeda and their growing desperation because they are losing in Iraq.

A glimpse of the future in Baqubah

Below John highlights Michael Yon's latest report on developments in Diyala province. Yon's report mostly summarizes the remarkable progress achieved by the "surge" counterinsurgency strategy in Diyala. At NRO's Corner, however, Michael Ledeen highlights Yon's account of the terrorist onslaught from which we have for the moment rescued Diyala:

Speaking through an American interpreter, Lieutenant David Wallach who is a native Arabic speaker, the Iraqi official related how al Qaeda united these [previously independent criminal] gangs who then became absorbed into “al Qaeda.” They recruited boys born during the years 1991, 92 and 93 who were each given weapons, including pistols, a bicycle and a phone (with phone cards paid) and a salary of $100 per month, all courtesy of al Qaeda. These boys were used for kidnapping, torturing and murdering people.

At first, he said, they would only target Shia, but over time the new al Qaeda directed attacks against Sunni, and then anyone who thought differently. The official reported that on a couple of occasions in Baqubah, al Qaeda invited to lunch families they wanted to convert to their way of thinking. In each instance, the family had a boy, he said, who was about 11 years old. As LT David Wallach interpreted the man’s words, I saw Wallach go blank and silent. He stopped interpreting for a moment. I asked Wallach, “What did he say?” Wallach said that at these luncheons, the families were sat down to eat. And then their boy was brought in with his mouth stuffed. The boy had been baked. Al Qaeda served the boy to his family.

Yon's narrative that belies the Democratic talking points on the war and undermines the case for withdrawal. It foreshadows the killing fields that we will leave behind us when we withdraw, and the future our common enemy has in mind for us. In his Weekly Standard editorial "Of Senators and soldiers," Bill Kristol elaborates on our progress against the enemy in Iraq in the context of political developments at home.

First they beheaded people who were opposed to them. Now they bake innocent children and make families eat them. This is the Al Quaeda that you never hear about in the MSM. Why? Why is their desperation not something you ever hear about in the MSM?

Next example:

Jihadists On Defense

On July 4, Zawahiri released a new video tape. The production values are pretty good, and Zawahiri is intercut with other footage, including television clips. What is striking about Zawahiri's message, however, is how defensive it is. And what Zawahiri is defensive about, is events in Iraq.

He begins by talking about Iraq, and that remains the main subject although there are passing references to other fields of battle. His theme on Iraq is the need for unity. Reading between the lines, you can tell that Muslims, including relatively radical Muslims, are distancing themselves from al Qaeda in Iraq, or, as Zawahiri calls it, the Islamic State of Iraq. He criticizes clerics who say there is no duty to carry out jihad in Iraq. He contrasts al Qaeda in Iraq favorably with Hamas, and complains that while Hamas receives near-universal support, al Qaeda in Iraq suffers from "a storm of media campaigns, allegations and claims ... whipped up in their face."

In part, as many commentators have noted, Zawahiri's plea for unity in Iraq reflects the abandonment of al Qaeda by most Sunnis there, and the fact that many Sunnis have joined with the U.S. and the Iraqi government in fighting al Qaeda. But the defensiveness Zawahiri betrays goes well beyond that schism. He plainly is concerned about how things are going in Iraq, and is anxious to generate support for his organization's efforts there.

I've never understood the theory that Iraq is somehow unrelated to the broader war on terror. It would not be possible to read what al Qaeda's leaders have written and listen to their tapes, and hold that view. At one point, Zawahiri exhorts his followers to "[h]urry to Afghanistan, to Iraq, hurry to Somalia, hurry to Palestine, and hurry to the towering Atlas Mountains." If we were to abandon Iraq, can anyone doubt that the flow of jihadists to those other regions, and more, would increase?

If we leave Iraq the one place they will start flowing to in large numbers is here in America. Why does the democrat party want to fight these savages in the streets of America?

One last posting from Powerline about the nuclear risks of North Korea and Iran:

Thinking about the barely thinkable

It's not much fun thinking about the nuclear ambitious, progress, and successes of North Korea and Iran, which may be why so many give it so little thought. This editorial in today's Examiner tries to direct our attention back to the subject. It offers no answers, but asks the right questions.

There is little doubt that in 3 to 5 years Iran will be bombing both Tel Aviv and Washington. When that so obviously certain future arrives the only question is what happens here in America? Who do we retaliate against? How much chance is there that we retaliate by starting a blood bath against the appeasers in the democratic party who are making sure this nuclear holocaust is in our future?

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The above is a typical sample of the news that Powerline covers that you will never see in the MSM. This is a good example of why listening to TV and reading newspapers is hazardous to your future. Most of what you hear or read are lies. That is why every year more and more people abandon TV and newspapers and get their news from the Internet.