NYC Letter: News From The Quagmire

If you take Iraq's measure from news reports, well, then you know that a successful and popular insurgency is killing off quislings left and right and pushing the coalition into the Shatt al-Arab. You may have heard all this or something very much like it before:

But back in the U.S. it was hard to tell that anything had changed. Pictures of errant missiles and bombed-out civilian targets were starting to fill the airwaves, and the Pentagon could respond only with black-and-white shots of craters being blown in the desert. Making it worse were Afghan opposition leaders who mocked the U.S. bombing as useless. Republicans on the Hill were pressing the White House for action. Murmurs about a "quagmire" and references to Vietnam were growing. The lead story in the Sunday New York Times on Oct. 28 said it all: allies preparing for a long fight as taliban dig in.

Days later, Mazar-i-Sharif fell, then Kabul. Within a few more days, complaints about a quagmire gave way to talk of collapse. "The Taliban fell faster than we thought," Bush told Time, looking back a few weeks later.

And as before the success of a new democratic Iraq is beyond the comprehension of the dreary nightly news cycle. The MSM remains confounded that a major war and its subsequent reconstruction doesn't play to a script conjectured by its enlightened editorial cabal.

Which brings us to this:

DEFIANTLY, THEY IGNORE THE BOMBS
AND QUEUE TO JOIN THE IRAQI ARMY

BAGHDAD July 25, 2005 (Telegraph) - The south gate of Muthanna army barracks in Baghdad is one of the most frequently bombed sites in Iraq.

Suicide bombers have killed 198 people here since last year. Almost all were potential recruits to the country's fledgling armed forces. Another 465 have been wounded.

But, in an extraordinary display of optimism, the youngsters hopeful of being recruited into the forces still come to queue.

The young men and handful of women in the queues say they are as keen for the private's salary of $400 a month as they are to serve their country to rid it off insurgents.

There are others who have had friends and relatives among the estimated 25,000 civilians killed over the past two years. Some also believe that the only way to get an American withdrawal from Iraq is to build a secure and substantial security force.

But all have an air of defiance, and in some of the fresh recruits there is a hint of gratitude for just making it through the queue at the murderous south gate, on Zawraa Road.

Ali Hamza, a 21-year-old who had always wanted to join the army, said: "It might be chaotic but I'm not afraid because I am willing to join the army and that has many dangers anyway.

"Also, in the new army people are respected."

Major Abdul Qadir, 40, the intelligence officer for the 1st Bn 1st Brigade of the Iraq National Guard, said soldiers living outside the barracks had received letters and leaflets from terror groups warning them that they would be assassinated.

The officer, who wore American combat fatigues after travelling to work in civilian clothes, said: "If we are not going to serve our country then who is going to serve it for the future? The US will leave and then we will be left on our own."

As we report below, the terrorist "insurgency" is far from populist. Unusual for an "insurgency", it has no defining national objectives. This probably has something to do with its ranks swelling with foreign terrorists.

Arthur Chernkoff writes regular exhaustive reports replete with good news from the quagmire. Turn off the evening news and give him a read.