Bogus Report On Earlier Attempt At A U.S./Sunni Al Anbar Alliance
A story started making it around the internet yesterday that a deal to form an alliance was succesfully negotiated between the U.S. and Al Anbar Sunni Tribes, in 2004. However, according to the report, the deal was shot down at at the highest levels of the Coalition Provisional Authority, becuase, allegedly, the Authority didn’t “want to recognize tribes in the new Iraq.” I was in Ramadi right as 2004 ended, and all I heard about from the military was it’s ever expanding coordination with local tribes. The Marine officers I was with were well versed in the structure of Iraqi society, which was family first, tribe second, nation third. The notion that the military was actually trying to operate in Al Anbar without recognizing and working with the local tribes is entirely at odds with my experience in the province’s capital. If the CPA was forbidding it, no one in Ramadi was paying attention.
Worse, according to yesterday’s story, once the alleged deal was allegedly aborted, no succesful working alliances were formed with the Al Anbar Sunni tribes until a couple months ago. Not true. There were working alliances with Sunni tribal leaders in Al Anbar for the entire period of time that the article implied there were none. I picked up the body parts of Sunni tribesman whose Sheiks had sent them to work with the coalition on the new Police Force - Al Qaeda blew them up. I watched Sunni tribesman fight Al Qaeda on the streets of Ramadi. I watched a variety of cooperative deals we struck with the Sheiks, on both military and civil affairs construction projects, almost comically, but definitely tragically, degenerate into N.Y. mafia style turf wars amongst the various tribes. It was progress, but there were a lot of kinks to be worked out. It was complications like these that kept dragging the process out. We didn’t pull it all together like magic after March 1, 2007. I sat in, and at times videotaped, meetings with General Casey, the President and Prime Minister of Iraq, the U.S. Ambassador to Iraq, and many, many tribal chieftains who were working with the coalition. I interviewed some of these sheiks, on videotape. The process of finally achieving the success of this year was a long and difficult one, and it is at best sloppy journalistic practices, and at worst sleazy ones, to imply that America somehow “blew it” by killing a deal three years ago, and failing to have any military and civil alliances with the Al Anbar tribes until just recently. That is a completely crap notion. I have the tape to prove it. And there were a lot more sheiks involved than the “19″ cited in the article. The article tries very hard to promote the lie that we did not work with the sheiks for three years by calling the current situation a “rekindling of a US plan first conceived in late 2003″. The fire never went out - it just required a while to build up.
In fact, as I reported in my story about Petraeus’ 12 Point draft surge plan, replacing the younger tribal warlords who had been fighting alongside us for over a year with more experienced Baath party members, was a key part of the plan.
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Fucking MSM, and Soros!!
May 4th, 2007 at 7:02 amhow do you turn the facts to MSM truths
maybe you will have to preface it with “that f ing bush”
May 4th, 2007 at 7:41 amAs usual, take a success and find a reason to undermine it. Never an accolade for a difficult job well done. Thanks Pat for providing the clarity.
May 4th, 2007 at 7:58 amas I posted earlier…
Even GEN Grant knew about the leanings of the MSM…
“[A portion of] the Northern press…always magnified rebel success and belittled ours, while another portion, most sincerely earnest in their desire for the preservation of the Union and the overwhelming success of the Federal armies, would nevertheless generally express dissatisfaction what whatever victories were gained because they were not more complete.” Ulysses S. Grant, Personal Memoirs. 1885–86, Chapter XLVII.
gotta keep folks stirred up so you can keep selling papers, or whatever the advertisers are hawking on TV…
May 4th, 2007 at 8:18 amThanks for setting the record straight, Pat. Just more proof of the MSM libels. I am going to continue inserting libels for liberals, because the two are synonomous.
Next thing we know, the girls school that was mined that you pointed out to us, which the MSM has yet to report on will be reported by them, but of course they will state this was being built by all US contractors, and overseen by the US troops, and the discovery was made my the terrorists…. And all the facist libels will buy it hook line and sinker…
May 4th, 2007 at 8:59 amOrwell anyone? Up is down. Right is wrong. Religion of peace. We support our troops.
Beam me the F up.
May 4th, 2007 at 9:13 amDevildog- this is how you turn facts to MSM truths:
May 4th, 2007 at 10:36 amTow the leftist line-
1. Blame Bush
2. Blame Republicans
Awesome! When we emerge victorious, I hope you have enough of these facts on videotape to throw right into the face of the MSM. Prove undeniably to the world once and for all how they and the Lefties try to undermine our military, our success. I can’t wait to see them try and squirm out of that. Thanks Pat.
Semper Fi
May 4th, 2007 at 10:45 amI doubted that story from Word One…I just cdn’t believe our military went from awesomely brilliant and creative to blinkered and stupid in about 5 minutes.
You seldom go wrong in presumptively disbelieving stories like that. I believe it originated in the blog run by EASON JORDAN…Anyone else remember that clown/pig, I DO!!
May 4th, 2007 at 11:03 ameason jordan is a fucking lying piece of shit, an ass licker of clinton and I suspect a lover of soros
he put the clinton in the clinton news network, he is the reason that cnn has shit ratings he is the reason i do not watch that fascist network
i hope he is around long enough to bury his kids
May 4th, 2007 at 9:27 pmOn a batch of recordings of phone conversations of President Johnson that were released about six months ago I heard him refer to those at the New York Times as,’a bunch of gd communists’.
May 4th, 2007 at 9:57 pm