Here's a post I was working on Friday when computer problems intervened. Sorry for the radio silence, but it's been busy here, plus I've been sick and in a bad mood. I figured following every link with, ". . .and to hell with 'em" wasn't very sporting, so I just caught up with my book club reading (Kristin Lavransdatter) instead. Anyway, from Friday:
I wasn't listening long enough to catch what Rush's point was going to be, but this afternoon I caught him playing a clip of Wolf Blitzer getting Madeleine Albright to back away from her implication that this week's Operation Swarmer was a wag-the-dog operation aimed at boosting the President's poll numbers. He had another clip of someone suggesting that the timing of the raid was suspicious --it just happened to be the 3 -year-anniversary.
Do these people even read the papers? There's a reason for the timing of the raid, and it's that we just broke up an incredibly dangerous Al-Qaeda plot --the first one that could have done real harm to the mission at the political level. I don't see why this hasn't gotten more coverage.
A senior Defense Ministry official confirmed the plot and said 421 al Qaeda men had been recruited to storm the U.S. and British embassies and take hostages. Several ranking Defense Ministry officials have been jailed in the plot, the official said on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the information. . . .Interior Minister Bayan Jabr said in an interview that the al Qaeda recruits were one bureaucrat's signature away from being accepted into an Iraqi army battalion whose job is to control the gates and main squares in the Green Zone. The plot was discovered three weeks ago.
"You can imagine what could happen to a minister or an ambassador while passing through these gates when those terrorists are there," Mr. Jabr said . . . .
Criminy! James Robbins --surely rightly-- notes that had this succeeded, it would have been Tet all over again. And he reminds us what that means:
Then, 19 VC sappers blew a hole in the wall surrounding the embassy grounds and shot down the guards inside the gate. A sharp firefight ensued, and enemy forces failed to occupy the embassy proper; but early erroneous reports, relayed by Asoociated Press reporter Peter Arnett, credited the VC with taking the first floor of the building. Moreover, while the attackers had been either killed or captured within hours of the assault, film of the attack ran and reran on network news programs, giving the impression of a much more significant action. Furthermore, the press quickly credited the enemy with a “psychological victory,” even though they had failed even to come close to meeting their military objectives.
Well, aren't we all glad ol' Pete ain't around to lose another war for us? But to return to my point, it seems obvious to me that in the course of uncovering this plot, we also got some good intelligence about where to find the plotters. WaPo helpfully reported that some people were killed in the battle. You had to read the British press to learn the strategic result.
Bomb-making equipment and military uniforms have been seized in a major air and ground assault on insurgent bases across Iraq's notorious Sunni triangle, US
military sources reported this evening.Hidden caches of artillery shells and explosives were also uncovered as Iraqi and American troops descended on isolated hideouts in the hilly Salahuddin province, between Tikrit and Samarra about 80 miles north of Baghdad
In other words, if Ms. Albright and her colleagues had any regard whatsoever for our country, our soldiers, or the Iraqi people trying so valiantly to be free, they'd have been congratulating the Iraqis & our soldiers for great work instead of taking small-minded potshots at Bush. Curtsies to Powerline & Ninme for a link each. (And P.S., since Friday it's been revealed we took out a number of "foreign fighters" too).
