Tough terrorist luck continues in Mosul:

Iraqi Security Forces decisively defeated another attack by anti-Iraqi forces as they attempted to seize a police station. In a separate incident, Multi-National Forces from 1st Brigade, 25th Infantry Division (Stryker Brigade Combat Team), detained five people suspected of anti-Iraqi activities during other operations on Dec. 17 in northern Iraq.

An Iraqi Police station came under attack by indirect and small arms fire during a coordinated effort by insurgent fighters to overrun the station in central Mosul. The Iraqi Police successfully repelled the attack denying insurgents access to the station. This is the sixth time since Nov. 10 where insurgents have tried but failed to overrun police stations.

Like any cowards, anti-democracy thugs seem best able to hurt children, civilians and the unsuspecting. Tellingly, much of the elite press is infatuated with them.

But Iraqis and Allied soldiers don't answer to journalists. Reconstruction continues (here and here), and the country is preparing for elections, fifteen of eighteen provinces reported as ready. Iraqis don't believe foreign or domestic critics who, for the twenty-third time in nearly as many months, are warning of civil war. In Najaf and Karbala, a powerful show of courage from citizens as mourners paid their respects publicly, likely near or at the same sites of Monday's attacks on processions.

THE ENEMY: Apparently they mustered enough loins to land indirect fire on an American base's dining facility. (It's strategically insignificant, so one wonders if terrorists are changing tactics, after six thwarted police station attacks, to capitalize on the American left's attempts at politically pressuring the Bush administration). The son of my councilman, with whom I went to high school, is based in Mosul; I'll keep an eye and an ear to news. Abrupt and disappointing as the news might be, keep in mind that this is war news. If you wake up every morning with the hopes that no American deaths or failures will be broadcast, you will become very despondent very quickly. The answer is not to ignore sad news; the answer is to remember that while terrorists continue to attack American troops and Iraqi democrats, the country of Iraq moves forward. In the same Google News thread feeding early Mosul reports, I found this story about rebirth in Sadr City. As always, only doubt can bring us down.

ABOUT COURAGE: Omar and Mohammed clarify some details of their stateside visit and their brother Ali's decision to stop blogging on Iraq the Model. Again, it is suggested that Ali believes his efforts to help Iraq are best directed elsewhere.