Right Voices

Via: The American Thinker

I’m a Major in the United States Military, in Iraq. The analysts and pundits, who don’t see what I see on a daily basis, have no factual basis to talk about the situation – especially if they have yet to set foot in Iraq. The media filters out most events, through a sieve of their latent prejudices – personal, political, and professional.*

The US media recently buzzed with the news of an intelligence report that is very negative about the prospects for Iraq’s future. CNN’s website said, “[The]National Intelligence Estimate was sent to the White House in July with a classified warning predicting the best case for Iraq was ‘tenuous stability’ and the worst case was civil war.”

That report, along with the car bombings and kidnappings in Baghdad in the past couple days, were portrayed in the media as more proof of absolute chaos and the intransigence of the insurgency. From where I sit, at the Operational Headquarters in Baghdad, that just isn’t the case. The public is being misled about what is happening.

The media types who think this “National Intelligence Estimate” is the last word on the situation either don’t know, or don’t want to know the realities of the process behind it. It was delivered to the White House in July. That means that the information that was used to derive the intelligence in the immediate aftermath of the April battle for Fallujah, and other events was gathered in the Spring.

The report doesn’t cover what has happened in July or August, let alone September. The naysayers will point to the recent battles in Najaf and draw parallels between that and what happened in Fallujah in April. They aren’t even close.

This letter is the ‘must read of the day’ – - it’s easy for all of us to play ‘armchair pundit’ over the Iraq war based on what we see in the mainstream media. Without having been there and without having truly experienced what is going on inside the country, we really only merely speculate.

Give it a read – it’s refreshing.

One of the parts of the article stuck out for me:

But the continuing defeatism is causing real harm.

-It is very demoralizing for us here in uniform to read & hear such negativity in our press.

-It is fodder for our enemies to use against us and against the vast majority of Iraqis who want their new government to succeed.

-It causes the American public to start thinking about the acceptability of “cutting our losses” and pulling out, which would be devastating for Iraq for generations to come.

-Muslim militants would claim a huge victory, causing us to have to continue to fight them elsewhere (remember, in war “Away” games are always preferable to “Home” games).

-Reports like that also cause Iraqis begin to fear that we will pull out before we finish the job, and thus they are less willing to openly support their interim government and US/Coalition activities.

Think about it.