Wasn’t that the question most bloggers were asking in the back of their minds? Certainly, Harry Reid, Christopher Dodd and John Murtha don’t want this reported. They don’t want it reported because, while it gets their name in the headlines, it also destroys their credibility on the subject. The bad news for Mssrs. Reid, Dodd and Murtha is that people are reporting on the progress in Iraq. This weekend, I wrote about a Chicago Tribune article written by Liz Sly. Here’s the first pull quote I used from her article:

Since the last soldiers of the “surge” deployed last May, Baghdad has undergone a remarkable transformation.

No longer do the streets empty at dusk. Liquor stores and cinemas have reopened for business. Some shops stay open until late into the evening. Children play in parks, young women stay out after dark, restaurants are filled with families and old men sit at sidewalk cafes playing backgammon and smoking shisha pipes.

The truth is finally seeping into the traditional media outlets’ news accounts. In fact, Ms. Sly’s article is a textbook refutation of the Democratic talking points on Iraq. I’m sure Ms. Sly’s article didn’t sit well with Sen. Reid.

As though that wasn’t enough, it gets worse for Mssrs. Reid, Dodd and Murtha because Rod Nordlund has written an article titled “Baghdad Comes Alive”, which describes the improving conditions in Baghdad.

For the first time, however, returning to Baghdad after an absence of four months, I can actually say that things do seem to have gotten better, and in ways that may even be durable. “It’s hard to believe,” says a friend named Fareed, who has also gone and come back over the years to find the situation always worse, “but this time it’s really not.” Such words are uttered only grudgingly by those such as me, who have been disappointed again and again by Iraq, where a pessimist is merely someone who has had to endure too many optimists. It doesn’t help that no sooner have I written these words than my cup of coffee spills as a massive explosion shakes our building—the first blast near our place in weeks, and the more shocking for that. We grab body armor and helmets and await the all-clear. It is “only” an IED near the entrance to the Green Zone, targeting a U.S. convoy and killing two civilians and one American soldier.

The explosion is the exception to the rule—but one of the reasons the U.S. military is gun-shy about claiming success too soon. IED attacks across the country are at their lowest point since September 2004, down 50 percent just since the surge peaked last summer. There hasn’t been a successful suicide car bombing in Baghdad in five weeks, and the few ones in recent months have been small and ineffective. There used to be four a day, many of which claimed scores of lives each. “Very sustained trends,” the official military spokesman, Rear Adm. Gregory Smith, says cautiously. “But it’s far too early to call this a statistically significant trend.”

So the following observations do not come so much from the brass: Al Qaeda in Iraq is starting to look like a spent force, especially in Baghdad. The civil war is in the midst of a huge, though nervous, pause. Most Shiite militias are honoring a truce. Iran appears to have stopped shipping deadly arms to Iraqi militants. The indigenous Sunni insurgency has declared for the Americans across broad swaths of the country, especially in the capital.

The Anbar Awakening isn’t a passing fad. It’s an emphatic statement to AQI that they’ve rejected AQI’s violence, that they’d rather have real lives spent with families than lives spent dying for ‘the cause’.

As Mr. Nordlund points out, Anbar isn’t the only place where a fragile, though seemingly durable peace seems to have broken out. Baghdad is now improving, though much work is still needed to solidify that peace.

People who have long lived like fugitives can now do the most normal things. Zuhair Humadi, a high-ranking Iraqi official who lives in the Green Zone, recently attended a public wedding celebration in Baghdad without a massive security detail. The Shorja bazaar in old Baghdad, hit by at least six different car bombs killing hundreds in the last year, is again crowded with people among the narrow tented stalls. On nearby Al Rasheed Street, the famous booksellers are back in business, after being driven into hiding by assassins and bombs. People are buying alcohol again—as they always had in Baghdad, until religious extremists forced many neighborhood liquor shops to close.

Despite all of this information seeping into the public’s view, Harry Reid keeps insisting that things aren’t going that well:

“Every place you go you hear about no progress being made in Iraq,” said Senate Democratic majority leader Harry Reid. “The government is stalemated today, as it was six months ago, as it was two years ago,” Reid told reporters, warning US soldiers were caught in the middle of a civil war. “It is not getting better, it is getting worse,” he said.

Christopher Dodd is taking it a step further:

“There is a lot of unease and disappointment,” said Senator Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut, who is running for president. “The perception is that we are not leading on this issue. I get it every single day, wherever I go.”

Mr. Dodd said lawmakers should just stop financing for the war. “Congress has one authority here, and that’s the funding,” he said. “The founders never intended for us as a body together to manage a conflict.” Mr. Dodd voted to block the spending measure.

Yesterday I asked the question “Why Are Democrats Opposed to Winning?” Following this weekend’s reporting from Ms. Sly and Mr. Nordlund, coupled with Christopher Dodd’s saying that Democrats should simple stop funding the war right when progress is being made and sustained, I have a different question:

Why is the Democratic leadership receptive only to defeat?

Technorati Tags: Harry Reid, Chris Dodd, John Murtha, Defeatocrats, Reporting, Chicago Tribune, Newsweek, Anbar Awakening, Baghdad

Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog

1. Here is one of the real reasons we are getting results!! IF ONLY THEY HAD DONE THIS 4 YEARS AGO! Think of the young men and women who would be here today.

   Will ‘armloads’ of US cash buy tribal loyalty?
   The US policy of paying Sunni Arab sheikhs for their allegiance could be risky.

   By Sam Dagher | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor
   from the November 8, 2007 edition

   “[The US military] threw money at [the sheiks],” says Col. David Hsu, who heads a team advising Iraq’s armed forces in Salahaddin, Saddam’s home province. He shows recent digital photographs he captured of smiling sheikhs holding bundles of cash as they posed with US military officers. “You are basically paying civilians to turn in terrorists. Money was an expedient way to try to get results.”

   US military officers on the ground say there is tremendous pressure from high above to replicate the successes of the so-called “awakening” against Al Qaeda in the western Anbar Province. The drive reached its apex in the run-up to the September testimonies to Congress by the top US military commander and diplomat in Iraq, US officers say.

   http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/1108/p01s04-wome.html

   Comment by MoneyGuy — November 19, 2007 @ 2:36 pm

2. You are a compete fool! The war is going very badly. It is a civil war and we are contributing to it.

   Comment by Joe — November 19, 2007 @ 9:47 pm

3. There are 3 kinds of people in the world:
   1.Those who make things happen
   2.Those who watch things happen, and
   3.Those who wonder what happened.

   Joe, did you know that aout 1,000 people a week are moving back into Baghdad because its suddenly getting safer, or that terrrist attacks are down from 30 to 40 per week to 5 or 6, or are you one of those in group 3?

   Comment by T. A. Gray — November 22, 2007 @ 8:55 pm

4. i must rebuke…the war is not going badly but it is not going smoothly either.many mistakes where made in the begining mainly by not having enough boots on the ground.we should have had double the amount of soldiers and we should not pander but crush any resitance.the biggest mistake in Iraq is thinking you can suddenly democratize these people.they have lived under some form of dictatorship for hundreds of years they have no understanding of what freedom is.in saying that there should be a marshall type law inacted and slowly and i mean slowly loosen the grip over time.because when you know nothing but control of every aspect of your life how can you have the tools to act civilized when the control is no longer there.it is just like a person who has been in prison over half of their life and then suddenly set free,they do not know what to do they have been institutionized.tight grip not a soft hand is what is needed here.we are still in germany after the fall of hitler and that was over 70 years ago.Democracy does not grow over night.just because you can zap a hot meal in minutes does not mean you can force democracy to take hold where it has never been to take hold in a few short years!The US is a very young country in comparrison to the rest of the world,which means our Democracy is still a new and young concept everything good takes time and only those with patients will reap the fruits of those labors.

   Comment by kathy — November 23, 2007 @ 12:20 pm

5. Your probably right Kathy. Democracy takes three conditions, general concensus among the population for democratic institutions, a literate population that takes an interest in public afairs, and the potential for economic growth and free enterprise. ( And im not too sure we are exactly in good shape on the first two ourselves right now.)

   But thats not up for us to decide in Iraq, all we should working for is a friendly government, and let them take it from there however they want to. We’ve had benevolent dictatorships before as allies: Chaing Kai Chek, Juan Peron, South Korea in its early days, and don’t forget democracy didn’t take long to start in Japan, (once we beat the crap out of Tojo).

   Comment by T. A. Gray — November 23, 2007 @ 10:13 pm

6. T.A., IF your three conditions are correct, we are in real trouble. First, the general consensus seems to be running toward a nanny, socialist state, not democratic institutions.

   Second, since the education system was federalized, a “literate” population has become a thing of the past.

   Last, the “potential” for economic growth has dwindled significantly, and the “free enterprise” portion of our economic system has virtually disappeared, being killed by the incredible and strangling web of government regulations.

   Ever since FDR convinced the public in general that it was the government’s job to ensure happiness for everyone, and since Mr. Lincoln took states’ rights away from the Constitution (not saying ending slavery was a bad thing, just that in the process he opened the door to federal intervention in every aspect of personal lives), the citizens of this country have been shortchanged by “our” representatives.

   Even down to the local city councils and county commissions.

   As far as Iraq goes, I have a hard time believing any Islamic-based government will survive as “democratic”. It goes against everything taught in Islam.

   The sooner we start using technology now available (nuclear power) and find a new, viable power source for powering our transportation, the sooner that portion of the world becomes totally irrelevant again. So much better for the sanity of earth.

   Comment by Carlos — November 24, 2007 @ 7:31 am

7. I wouldnt say economic potential has been strangled, yet, although the State of California seems bound and determined to, tax and over regulate it to death.
   F’rinstance, in San Diego now, recycling, which just about everybody does on their own anyways, is mandatory, another useless city ordnance so the jackass’s on the City Council can feel good about themselves and upgrade their status among the old hippy do gooders still in their tie dyes and berkenstocks! What a waste!

   As to the genertal concensus for democratic institutions and ideals, all you have to do is look at the marxist lunacy that shows up on here once in a while or from the useless idiots in San Francisco under the guise of tolerance and diversity for the queers to see thats going down the toilet.

   And your right, ever since the public schools lost true local control, they have gone to hell. History and geography have been replaced by sex ed. so the preverts on the faculty can get their jollies showing kids how to put rubbers on bananas.

   Comment by T. A. Gray — November 24, 2007 @ 10:57 am

8. Yeah, I’m glad when I was in secondary they let us learn on our own, from our parents, or from reading those “nasty” books. Seems to me I remember some of the girls getting pregnant, but not nearly as many as nowadays. Guess they forget how to put condoms on bananas or cukes, or, because everything is permissable now, they don’t care (the state is responsible for taking care of my baby, anyway).

   As for being strangled economically, every jackass regulation they (all levels of bureaucracy) dump on business increases the paperwork geometrically, and Lord help the poor sucker who tries to do it himself because he can’t afford an accountant. As a matter of fact, Lord help the poor sucker who screws up ANY of the paperwork ’cause the full force of that level of bureaucracy will be on him like flies on a dung heap.

   And bureaucratic regulation is (in my opinion) solely responsible for the incredible prices of property we see now, having virtually eliminated the supply of land anywhere people would wish to build. The sad thing about the regulation, though, is that the regulators can’t for the life of them see what’s wrong with what they’re doing! Personally, it wouldn’t hurt my feelings a bit if all building and land use regulations in my state (Oregon) were made null and void, and a new, common sense approach were made to those regulations.

   But enough of this rant. Your points are well taken, T.A.

   Comment by Carlos — November 24, 2007 @ 1:21 pm

9. Pregnancy rates today in high even caring to use condoms, the lack of morality, and the playboy philosophy todays parents and teachers grew up with more than it does not knowing what to do with them. When I was in high school, there was a lot sex going on, but we were scared to death of the consequences. Today there’s even more sex and because parents and teachers are so “caring and sensitive” about it, the kids just figure its no big deal the main thing is have fun.

   Comment by T. A. Gray — November 24, 2007 @ 3:18 pm

10. It all goes to being taught that “happiness” is a right granted under the Constitution, and forgetting that it is actually “the pursuit of happiness” that is granted, and that it is Uncle Sugar’s responsibility to ensure that happiness.

    Comment by Carlos — November 24, 2007 @ 10:15 pm