Thursday, September 6, 2007

Hellfire and Brimstone: Killing al Qaeda in Samarra

Jeff Emanuel, embedded in Iraq:


“We’ve been told that ‘no al Qaeda sleep in the city,’” Captain Buddy Ferris, commander of the 82nd Airborne’s Charlie Company 2-505 (the battalion is also known as “2-Panther”), told me. His Company is the lone conventional unit responsible for the city of Samarra and the entirety of the sparsely populated (and therefore perfect for hiding people and weapons) surrounding countryside. “They know that we’ll hunt them down and kill them.”


Go read the full post.

We are fortunate to have so many brave journalists willing to endure the rigors of war to bring us the stories that the "Rashid Bureau" of the MSM can not or will not tell. Michael Yon. Michael Totten. Jeff Emanuel. Wes Morgan. Matt Sanchez.

The constant drone of negativity and defeat, interspersed with spectacular stories like the Haditha trial, the Yazidi bombing and the shootout in Karbala last month, create an environment in which the American public expects failure. The dispatches we get from the embedded journalists tell a very different story.

Our guys are winning this thing, and creating a very differnt environment on the ground in Iraq.