HJS RESPONDS: "Winning isn't news"

In Case You Hadn't Heard...

(Hjs comments) When we reached the point in the Vietnam War in which the enemy was beaten and returning to Hanoi and even the Viet Cong was unable to let out a squeak, the Dean of our Leftist media was left with nothing to say except, "The War is Lost." I believe now that he meant "their" war against us, but our Leftist Congress picked up on the theme and used it to declare defeat--and they are always so quick to declare defeat; Harry Reid has already done so--and pull our troops out and cut off the funds so that their Leftist buddies in Hanoi can send their defeated armies back in and start one of the biggest blood baths in recent history. That blood, of course, is on the doorstep of our Congress. And what have they learned? What they always learn, nothing. Here is more of the same, updated...

Winning Isn't News

By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY

Iraq: What would happen if the U.S. won a war but the media didn't tellthe American public? Apparently, we have to rely on a British newspaperfor the news that we've defeated the last remnants of al-Qaida in Iraq.

London's Sunday Times called it "the culmination of one of the mostspectacular victories of the war on terror." A terrorist force that once numbered more than 12,000, with strongholds in the west and centralregions of Iraq, has over two years been reduced to a mere 1,200 fighters, backed against the wall in the northern city of Mosul. The destruction of al-Qaida in Iraq (AQI) is one of the most unlikelyand unforeseen events in the long history of American warfare.

We can thank President Bush's surge strategy, in which he bucked both Republican and Democratic leaders in
Washington by increasing our forces there instead of surrendering. We can also thank the leadership of the new general he placed in chargethere, David Petraeus, who may be the foremost expert in the world oncounter-insurgency warfare.

And we can thank those serving in our military in Iraq who engaged local Iraqi tribal leaders and convinced them America was their friend and AQI their enemy. Al-Qaida's loss of the hearts and minds of ordinary Iraqis began in Anbar Province, which had been written off as a basket case, and spreadout from there.

Now, in Operation Lion's Roar the Iraqi army and the U.S. 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment is destroying the fraction of terrorists who are left.

More than 1,000 AQI operatives have already been apprehended.

Sunday Times reporter Marie Colvin, traveling with Iraqi forces in Mosul, found little AQI presence even in bullet-ridden residential areasthat were once insurgency strongholds, and reported that the terrorists have lost control of its Mosul urban base, with what is left of the organization having fled south into the countryside.

Meanwhile, the State Department reports that Iraqi Prime Minister Nourial-Maliki's government has achieved "satisfactory" progress on 15 of the18 political benchmarks - a big change for the better from a year ago.

Things are going so well that Maliki has even for the first time floated the idea of a timetable for withdrawal of American forces. He did so while visiting the United Arab Emirates, which over the weekend announced that it was forgiving almost $7 billion of debt owed by Baghdad - an impressive vote of confidence from a fellow Arab state inthe future of a free Iraq.

But where are the headlines and the front-page stories about all this good news? As the Media Research Center pointed out last week, "the CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News and CNN's Anderson Cooper 360 were silent Tuesday night about the benchmarks" that signaled political progress.

The war in Iraq has been turned around 180 degrees both militarily and politically because the president stuck to his guns. Yet apart from IBD,Fox News Channel and parts of the foreign press, the media don't seem to consider this historic event a big story.