Archives for July 2007

Much of it will sound familiar if you’ve been reading Michael Totten’s dispatches.

Elsewhere, the Telegraph: Paper backs off Maliki-Petraeus row because they made up the story.

UPDATEFrom today’s White House Briefing: (emphasis added)

Points From Rear Adm. Fox Briefing, Baghdad , Iraq : July 30, 2007

Our offensive operations continue with increasing evidence that the surge is pressuring terrorists, keeping them off balance, and eliminating safe havens. We have established a degree of tactical momentum that we will continue to build on.

· We continue to pressure former sanctuaries in the Baghdad Belts, around Ramadi and in and around Baqouba.

· We are denying al Qaeda Iraq (AQI) freedom of movement and disrupting extremist secret cells while increasing local citizens’ confidence in the Coalition and Iraqi Security Force.

The number of caches found and cleared continues to grow.
· In the last week, Coalition and Iraqi Security Forces seized more than 120 weapons caches.
· We have seized more weapons caches in the first six months of this year than all of last year combined.

Leads and tips received from Iraqi citizens are up and helping us discover these weapons caches. Last month there were some 23,000 tips a month, four times the number at this time last year.

We are seeing more and more Iraqis turning against violence.
· On July 7, 100 Sheikhs and 400 religious and political leaders met in Ramadi for a conference called “Promise of the People.”
o They agreed to “The Ramadi Covenant” – a solemn agreement between tribes and most importantly with the Government of Iraq that is a clear sign the people of Iraq are rejecting the hatred, violence, sectarianism and Taliban-like state offered by AQI.
· In Baqoubah, 50 tribal leaders met at the governor’s house on July 14 to discuss security, services, and pledged to work together in the Muqdadiyah Tribal Conference.
· On July 16 in Taji, Sunni and Shia shieks pledged unity to one another to stop the sectarian attacks, each signing a map next to their village.
· On July 23, 16 local shieks and tribal leaders in Khalis pledged on behalf of some 75 shieks to work to end the violence.

now liberals are accusing the Bush Justice Department of cooking up spurious claims of voter fraud in the 2006 elections and creating what the New York Times calls a “fantasy” that voter fraud is a problem.
…
Instead, Sen. Leahy and other liberals are busy dismissing concerns about voter fraud, no doubt in an effort to make certain the Justice Department drops the issue as a priority before the 2008 election. But the blunders and politicization of parts of the Bush Justice Department notwithstanding, voter fraud deserves to be investigated and prosecuted. The Justice Department may be dysfunctional and poorly led, but the Democratic Congress seems more interested in paralyzing its activities than helping to fix the problem.