"Irritating Contradiction"

To those eagerly anticipating an American defeat, progress under the Surge is just so damned irritating, as the article linked below from Der Spiegel points out. It's especially irritating after Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, with troops in the field no less, stood up and loudly declared the war to be lost. That was a truly amazing performance. Perhaps he had reason to suspect that the Surge might succeed, and therefore needed to be truncated by a Congressionally mandated defeat before that could happen. But that's just a guess because, really, who can tell for sure what goes on in a mind so microscopic?

In any case, Harry's heroic declaration made him a stand-up guy in the fever swamps of the anti-Bushwar Left, including a large chunk of the media, and the whole pack instantly became quite giddy. But hopes were dashed when it came to nothing, except for the dive in Congress's approval rating to around 12%. The problem was that Reid had, as is his wont, not thought it through. Or maybe he did think it through as far as he was able, and that turned out to be no great distance. To those on the other side, his daring probe of new heights of irresponsibility led to claims that there exists no lower form of life than Harry Reid.

I myself take what I think is a suitably moderate position. Reid clearly is not the lowest form of life, and it's plainly unjust to claim that he is. In his defense, I would say rather that he's only the lowest form to be found among phyla more advanced than the mollusks, or possibly the segmented worms.

Byron


http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,499154,00.html

Ramadi is an irritating contradiction of almost everything the world thinks it knows about Iraq -- it is proof that the US military is more successful than the world wants to believe. Ramadi demonstrates that large parts of Iraq -- not just Anbar Province, but also many other rural areas along the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers -- are essentially pacified today. This is news the world doesn't hear: Ramadi, long a hotbed of unrest, a city that once formed the southwestern tip of the notorious "Sunni Triangle," is now telling a different story, a story of Americans who came here as liberators, became hated occupiers and are now the protectors of Iraqi reconstruction.