A thought from Iraq - "Doom & Gloom about Iraq's future...I don't see it from where I'm sitting."

[For those of you who haven't gotten my "Thoughts" before, I'm a Major in the USMC on the Multi-National Corps staff in Baghdad. The analysts and pundits who don't see what I see on a daily basis, in my opinion, have very little credibility to talk about the situation - especially if they have yet to set foot in Iraq. Everything Americans believe about Iraq is simply perception filtered through one's latent prejudices until you are face-to-face with reality. If you haven't seen, or don't remember, the John Wayne movie, The Green Berets, you should watch it this weekend. Pay special attention to the character of the reporter, Mr. Beckwith (the Journalist in the movie). His characters experience is directly related to the situation here. You'll have a different perspective on Iraq after the movie is over.]

The US media is abuzz today with the news of an intelligence report that is very negative about the prospects for Iraq's future. CNN's website says, "[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 are being 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. Let's lay out some background, first about the "National Intelligence Estimate." The most glaring issue with its relevance is the fact that it was delivered to the White House in July. That means that the information that was used to derive the intelligence was gathered in the Spring - in the immediate aftermath of the April battle for Fallujah, and other events. 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. The bad guys did us a HUGE favor by gathering together in one place and trying to make a stand. It allowed us to focus on them and defeat them. Make no mistake, Al Sadr's troops were thoroughly smashed. The estimated enemy killed in action is huge. Before the battles, the residents of the city were afraid to walk the streets. Al Sadr's enforcers would seize people and bring them to his Islamic court where sentence was passed for religious or other violations. Long before the battles people were looking for their lost loved ones who had been taken to "court" and never seen again. Now Najafians can and do walk their streets in safety. Commerce has returned and the city is being rebuilt. Iraqi security forces and US troops are welcomed and smiled upon. That city was liberated again. It was not like Fallujah - the bad guys lost and are in hiding or dead.

You may not have even heard about the city of Samarra. Two weeks ago, that Sunni Triangle city was a "No-go" area for US troops. But guess what? The locals got sick of living in fear from the insurgents and foreign fighters that were there and let them know they weren't welcome. They stopped hosting them in their houses and the mayor of the town brokered a deal with the US commander to return Iraqi government sovereignty to the city without a fight. The people saw what was on the horizon and decided they didn't want their city looking like Fallujah in April or Najaf in August.

Boom, boom, just like that two major "hot spots" cool down in rapid succession. Does that mean that those towns are completely pacified? No. What it does mean is that we are learning how to do this the right way. The US commander in Samarra saw an opportunity and took it -- probably the biggest victory of his military career and nary a shot was fired in anger. Things will still happen in those cities, and you can be sure that the bad guys really want to take them back. Those achievements, more than anything else in my opinion, account for the surge in violence in recent days -- especially the violence directed at Iraqis by the insurgents. Both in Najaf and Samarra ordinary people stepped out and took sides with the Iraqi government against the insurgents, and the bad guys are hopping mad. They are trying to instill fear once again. The worst thing we could do now is pull back and let that scum back into people's homes and lives.

So, you may hear analysts and prognosticators on CNN, ABC and the like in the next few days talking about how bleak the situation is here in Iraq, but from where I sit, it's looking significantly better now than when I got here. The momentum is moving in our favor, and all Americans need to know that, so please, please, pass this on to those who care and will pass it on to others. 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, and 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 less willing to openly support their interim government and US/Coalition activities. We are realizing significant progress here -- not propaganda progress, but real strides are being made. It's terrible to see our national morale, and support for what we're doing here, jeopardized by sensationalized stories hyped by media giants whose #1 priority is advertising income followed closely by their political agenda; getting the story straight falls much further down on their priority scale, as Dan Rather and CBS News have so aptly demonstrated in the last week.

Thanks for listening. Feedback is always welcome, though I can't promise an immediate response....

And the Major's response:
Thank you for your email. I apologize for this canned reply, but I simply cannot keep up with all the email I have received in response to my recent "Thought" about the situation here in Iraq. If you forward my message, please strip out my email address. If you've already forwarded it, please resend to your distribution list and ask the recipients to take out my email address. I need to stem the tide of email here so I don't jam the system & get in trouble.

For the skeptics among you, yes I am a real person assigned to the Engineer section of the Mult-National Corps - Iraq. I hope the text you received was the original, undoctored version. If what you have mentions either of the Presidential candidates at all, what you got has been "creatively edited" in cyberspace. I got one email berating me for calling Sen. Kerry a socialist. I never wrote that, or even thought it, for that matter. Being skeptical is generally a healthy thing to be in the age of instant communication. I wrote what I did basically in response to the hype over the National Intelligence Estimate, which I cover in the message. We have been given no PR guidance, nor any "talking points" to use when sending letters & email back home. When I get passionate about something I tend to put it in writing. That is what happened here.

I have received over 700 emails in response to my message, and over 97% of them are positive and encouraging. Some are very humbling. The best ones are those from the parents of other military personnel over here who say that their sons & daughters are telling them the exact same things, but no one seems to care or listen. That corroboration means the world to me. If your message falls into this category, know that your words mean the world to me and all of us here are incredibly thankful for your unbridled support.

The other 3% of the messages have been very those with dissenting opinions, but most of them have been very civil and while stating disagreement with out presence here, state strong support for our troops, drawing a distinction between the those who make policy and those who enforce it. I appreciate the civil dissent and respect your opinions. More than that, I revel in the fact that you have the right to be at odds with our government.

Unfortunately, some responses have just been snide and obnoxious, accusing me of partisan propagandizing and parroting the President's party line (how's that for alliteration?). They have the right to disagree, but when they go to the point of questioning my integrity or being crude, then the line is crossed & I hit the delete button.

If you've made it this far, thank you for your patience and, again, I apologize for not being able to reply personally to all the messages I've gotten. I will read what you've written & will certainly respond to some of them.