Media Mythbusters Blog

Cross-posted at Confederate Yankee:

Too craven to directly vote for the surrender in Iraq that they would like to hang around the neck of President Bush as a defeat, desperate House Democrats are seeking other ways to lose the war in Iraq. One technique they are trying is simply stalling the 2008 war budget.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates outlined an almost $190 billion request last week for the military in Iraq and Afghanistan over the coming year. But House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey (D., Wis.) said this morning that he had “absolutely no intention” of reporting out a bill this year to fund “any such request that simply serves to continue the status quo.”

At the same time, the same Democrats behind this plan to cut funding to our soldiers are threatening to cripple us with taxes unless they get a commitment to withdraw.

Why are Democrats so desperate to change U.S. policy in Iraq?

Probably because the “status quo” isn’t a status quo and hasn’t been for some time, and their window to salvage a defeat in Iraq appears to be narrowing (h/t Instapundit)

• On Monday came news that U.S. military deaths in Iraq fell to 64 in September, the fourth straight drop since peaking at 121 in May and driving the toll to a 14-month low.
• Civilian deaths also have plunged, dropping by more than half from August to 884. Remember just six months ago all the talk of an Iraqi “civil war”? That seems to be fading.
• The just-ended holy month of Ramadan in Iraq was accompanied by a 40% drop in violence, even though al-Qaida had vowed to step up attacks.
• Speaking of al-Qaida, the terrorist group appears to be on the run, and possibly on the verge of collapse — despite making Iraq the center of its war for global hegemony and a new world order based on precepts of fundamentalist Islam.
• Military officials say U.S. troops have killed Abu Usama al-Tunisi, a Tunisian senior leader of al-Qaida in Iraq who was responsible for bringing foreign fighters into the country. Not surprisingly, the pace of foreign fighters entering Iraq has been more than halved from the average of 60 to 80 a month.
• Last month, 1,200 Iraqis waited patiently in line in Iraq’s searing heat to sign up to fight al-Qaida. They will join an estimated 30,000 volunteers in the past six months — a clear sign the tide has turned in the battle for average Iraqis’ hearts and minds.
• Finally, and lest you think it’s all death and destruction, there’s this: Five million Iraqi children returned to school last week, largely without incident, following their summer vacations.

These developments are occurring just one week after Iraqi PM Nouri al-Malaki claimed that the threat of civil war in Iraq has been averted and that Iranian interference has “ceased to exist,” and on the exact same day that al-Malaki announced that Iraqi defense and police forces were ready to take over all security responsibilities from the British in Basra in two months.

Yesterday, CBS News published an account by National Review’s Pete Hegseth that indicates U.S. strategy has crippled al Qaeda.

Over the past few years, Democrats have shamelessly crafted their political road ahead on the future rhetoric of “we told you so,” intending to be able to look back and point out to the American people that they predicted the Iraq War would be a failure well in advance, while never admitting they helped craft the failure. The goal of this plan is to re-establish some of national security credibility that the Democratic Party forfeited decades ago.

Towards that end, and to further their political goals, they have worked against the best interests of the American military, the American people, and the citizens of Iraq.

This latest attempt by Obey, Murtha, and other House Democrats shows that they will continue to attempt to craft policy to ensure the failure in Iraq that they think will most benefit their political party.

But if the trends towards lower civilian and military deaths continues, as the Awakening spreads across provinces both Sunni and Shia, how much longer will Democrat politicians be able to claim that the war is “lost?” How much longer will out nation’s media be able to hide signs of progress?

At this moment, the two most prominent stories relating in any way to Iraq are a contrived smear campaign against a radio talk show host by a special-interest group linked to a Democratic Presidential candidate, and the Congressional investigation into the apparent brutality of American security contractors working for Blackwater USA, who have fired their weapons in 195 missions out of more than 16,000 since 2005—roughly 1.2%–and recorded 16 Iraqi casualties since 2005, prior to the Sept. 16 shooting in Baghdad’s Nisoor Square that left 11 Iraqis dead and 14 wounded.

And yet while these stories dominating the news media from Iraq are about aspects of the war, they are far from being the whole story about Iraq, or even the most important stories.

The important stories–those being largely ignored by the progressional media–are being told in food shipments to the poor in quieting towns that “al Qaeda lost,” in now routine city council meetings in Fallujah, and by businessmen and mayors in Diyala and elsewhere, and written by American and Iraqi alike.

The War in Iraq is going badly for the Democratic Party, but it appears they will not go down without a fight.