Myth-Busters

A random sample from today's headlines....

The "insurgency" in Iraq is winning

Not so, says Mark Steyn:

On Friday, the allegedly explosive "Arab street" finally exploded, in the largest demonstration against al-Qa'eda or its affiliates seen in the Middle East. "Zarqawi," shouted 200,000 Jordanians, "from Amman we say to you, you are a coward!" Also "the enemy of Allah" - which, for a jihadist, isn't what they call on Broadway a money review....

I don't know what Islamist Suicide-Bombing For Dummies defines as a "soft target" but a Jordanian-Palestinian wedding in the public area of an hotel in a Muslim country with no infidel troops must come pretty close to the softest target of all time. Even more revealing, look at who Zarqawi dispatched to blow up his brother Muslims: why would he send Ali Hussein Ali al-Shamari, one of his most trusted lieutenants, to die in an operation requiring practically no skill?

Well, by definition it's hard to get suicide bombers with experience. But Mr Shamari's presence suggests at the very least that the "insurgency" is having a hard time meeting its recruitment targets. [emphases added]

U.S. forces are employing "torture" against Islamist "detainees"

"Wanna bet?", challenges Heather McDonald in City Journal:

The U.S. military recently uncovered alleged evidence of torture in Iraqi-run Baghdad prisons, including what appeared to be a torture chamber in an Iraqi Ministry of Interior detention facility. The Sunni reaction to these discoveries poses a considerable problem for proponents of the anti-American “torture narrative”: The Sunnis are calling on the U.S. military to correct the situation! “I wish the Americans would go to [the prisons] and find out about it,” former detainee Sadiq Abdul Razzaq Samarrai told the New York Times.

This is bizarre behavior indeed. According to Andrew Sullivan, Seymour Hersh, and other proponents of the “torture narrative,” Americans are the leading sadists in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Cuba. For the Sunnis to ask the Americans to protect them against alleged Shiite abuse would seem to them as delusional as a Jewish prisoner in Auschwitz appealing to Hitler for salvation.

But the Iraqi reaction to the recent torture allegations defies the conventional “torture” wisdom in more ways than one. It turns out that the safest prisons in Iraq are those enjoying regular American oversight. Another former detainee, Amar Sami Samarrai (cousin of Sadiq Abdul), credits his safe treatment to the fact that the Americans had gone through his detention center near Baghdad four times during his 38-day stay, according to the New York Times. [emphases added]

Bush has never had any plan for Iraq and doesn't have one now

"Buffalo bagels!" thunders Ed Morrissey:

Despite the blatherings in Congress last week, the military has its own plans on when American forces can safely withdraw from Iraq. Based on readiness assessments of the indigenous security forces as well as political progress, it assumes that one American battalion can leave the theater for every three Iraqi battalions that achieve a Level Two readiness - able to take a leadership role in combat operations with some American support, be that tactical or communication or leadership. It's a formula that makes sense, and more to the point, it's one we've seen work in the field where Iraqi troops have been able to occupy cities after cleaning out terrorist holdouts.

We have heard this formula over and over again from the Pentagon and the White House, and yet the opposition keeps insisting that no one has any plan for disengagement in Iraq. The plan for disengagement is victory - a free and democratic government in Baghdad that has the security forces to protect itself while Iraqis make their own decisions on how to govern themselves.

This plan will have an estimated third of the 150,000 American troops currently in Iraq "redeployed" by the end of next year - hopefully to some place where they're needed more, like Syria or Iran.

U.S. troops using same techniques and tactics (i.e. chemical weapons) that Saddam used

"Gimme a break," growls Jim Geraghty:

[Anti-American Italian "documentarian" Sigfrido] Ranucci says..."When Saddam used [white phosphorus] it was a chemical weapon, but when the Americans use it, it's a conventional weapon. The injuries it inflicts, however, are just as terrible however you describe it."

By this standard, the injuries from bullets are just as terrible, however you describe it or whoever fires them. The problem in Iraq wasn't just the existence of white phosphorus in Iraq's arsenal; it was the fact that Saddam enthusiastically used it against civilians as a method of maintaining power through fear. [emphasis added]

Whereas U.S. soldiers use it in combat against jihadi fighters, and for passive, not aggressive, purposes:

American mortars or howitzers would drop several white phosphorus shells as close as possible to an entrenched enemy position. The white phosphorus-saturated felt wedges would then deploy and fall to the ground, where some could potentially burn terrorists hiding in trenches and spider holes, but it would almost certainly obscure their vision, no matter what kind of cover they were under.

The terrorists, knowing that American forces preferred to use the dense smoke of white phosphorus to screen attacks, would panic, fearing they were about to be overrun. As they evacuated their entrenched ambush positions, high explosive shells were the fired to kill the insurgents flushed out in the open.

Looks like the good guys are still the good guys - and are still kicking major league ass.

What's that old expression? "You don't throw rocks at a guy holding a machine gun."

Lib propagandists might want to keep that in mind.