Some note was made of South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham announcing on a Sunday morning television program that the terrorist combine in Iraq was "alive and well," though the value of his statement seems derived mostly from the man's party and southern origins — a Republican ally of President Bush included in his generally optimistic assessment a provocative line or two, and that is worth quite a lot to those fixed opposite the White House. Less consideration is given to the veracity of Graham's phrase, "alive and well." By whose accounting? The day's victims of terrorism were described in part by the Associated Press as "child vendors" and "pensioners." Thugs in the extreme west of the country harrassed a border town conspicuously enough to catch American attention and the following match of skill and strength took place:
[T]errorists [in Karabilah] set up a barricade on a main road to the city and were threatening Iraqi civilians. The seven precision-guided air strikes began at 11:40 a.m., and are estimated to have killed approximately 40 terrorists. There have been no Marine casualties. The Coalition aircraft, fighter jets and attack helicopters from the 2nd Marine Aircraft Wing (Forward) attacked the terrorist compound and surrounding area targeting the armed men.There are no reports of civilian casualties or collateral damage.
Forced to operate in the respective concealments of rural and heavily urban environments, terrorists failed to prevent another reinstitution of normalcy: Baghdad's Al-Sha'ab Stadium has reopened, with commensurate security measures and decades-overdue renovations, to host regular matches for Iraq's new soccer league.
More Republican congressmen have, with Graham, been taken partially out of context, primarily by the selection of and order in which their statements are reported. Add the transcripts up for a sum of what we knew: Iraqis and Allies are fighting against a terror force led by Iran and Syria, and facilitated by Ba'athists. Strip away the elite media's exclusion of news unrelated to violence and gainsaying about "the real Iraq" becomes very ironic, a buckling enemy apparent.
ALSO: In London, Ahmad's survey of news includes two more contradictions of terrorist well-being. Would tribes break tradition unless Baghdad gave them convincing reasons? Would an arm of the United Nations enter a country from where some are demanding an exit?
PERSPECTIVE, RECONSIDERATION: An Indian news agency published a brief on Al-Sha'ab. From Baghdad, Ali Fadhil — who was initially skeptical of the major Iraqi security operation in Baghdad, alternatively known as Lightning and Thunder — writes of success that is both empirical and witnessed firsthand. Setting a poignant comparison between Saddam's corrupt, uniformed roughnecks and the new republic's G-Men, Ali judges police performance as imperfect but effective — and another step forward in Iraq's democratic self-determination.