Iraq: A pessimistic assessment
Scott Johnson

One of our hometown heroes serving in Iraq has written to provide his assessment of the situation there. He writes by way of preface:

It's not pretty but it is reality. My job as a Human Intelligence collector provides me with uncommon situational awareness regarding, not Iraq as a whole, but much of southern Iraq. I meet with chiefs of police, I have been to the Provincial Security meetings, I have questioned terrorists of all stripes, I run sources, and collect the information to put bad guys in jail. I also read a lot of classified reporting from all over the country. What I say I don't say lightly and I say with regret. But as someone who has been separated from my wife, friends, and family for 20 months already (with four months to go thanks to the surge) and as service members continue to lose life and limb I feel that I can no longer hold my tongue.

Here is his assessment:

We want to succeed in Iraq. Because we want to succeed we continually look for ways and opportunities to contribute. This desire to succeed also spawns an eternal optimism that maybe somehow someway things will get better. Wanting to succeed though is no excuse to ignore reality, and the reality in Iraq is ugly. ...

Did you see yesterdays post?:

2007.04.01 Iraq/Surrendercrat Roundup
-- "An Activist, Not a Reporter"
-- Michael Ware heckles McCain at Baghdad press conference
-- Would you like some booze with your news?
-- Obama: Senate Will Abandon Timelines After Veto

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Red on red mania: Sunni insurgents
kill two Al Qaeda capos in Baghdad
Allahpundit

Well, who knows. Assuming it’s true it sounds like it happened within the past few weeks or months, which adds some background to last week’s AQ car-bomb assassination of one of the leaders of the 1920 Revolution Brigades. Roggio thinks the 1920 Brigades might themselves be splitting into pro- and anti-AQ wings. That would make sense given the news about members of the al-Zubaie clan warring with each other, culminating in an assassination attempt on Iraqi deputy PM Salam al-Zubaie by one of his own relatives. The Times provides a possible motive:

Some senior Sunni insurgents believe that Al-Qaeda in Iraq shares the agenda of Iranian-backed Shi’ite militias to plunge the country into ever more violent sectarian conflict rather than concentrating on the fight against the US-led coalition.

Late last year Salam al-Zubaie, Iraq’s deputy prime minister, began secret talks with the Sunni groups with the aim of coaxing them away from Al-Qaeda. He held meetings with commanders of groups including the 20th Revolutionary Brigade, the general command of the Iraqi armed forces, the Islamic Army of Iraq, the Ba’ath party and the Salah al-Deen al-Ayyubi Brigade…

A senior commander in the Islamic Army said Zubaie had promised not only to help to unify the Sunni groups but also to provide them with financial and logistical support to stop Iranian infiltration.

The insurgents demanded assurances from the government that they would not be arrested or attacked by the security forces. They also asked for promises that they could eventually join the security forces.

There was one sticking point. “We insisted that our fight with the occupying forces would continue as they are to blame for our current situation,” the Islamic Army commander claimed.

So it’s not all good news, needless to say. In fact, I’m not even sure al-Zubaie chatting with them about focusing on “Iranian infiltration” is unmitigated good news given what that might mean. Maybe it’s a reference to Revolutionary Guard operatives inside Iraq, maybe it’s a Sunni politician giving them veiled approval to start bumping off Sadrist/Shiite government ministers. Hopefully not the latter given the evident distaste some Sunni insurgents have for AQ and its mania for sectarian warfare. That’s the best news to take out of all this.

Speaking of which,  ...

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A heckler, not a reporter
Paul Mirengoff

As Scott notes in his post below, CNN's Michael Ware has denied heckling Sen. McCain during a press conference (he doesn't say whether or not he laughed at McCain). However, Ware's appearance with Soledad O'Brien, as quoted by Scott, is enough to condemn him as unfit to cover the war. Here's what Ware had to say about McCain and other Republicans who are visiting Baghdad:

Essentially they're here to view the impact of the surge on the baghdad security plan and essentially to sell its merits to say that, yes, it is having an impact and to take that message home to an american people desperate to hear signs of progress...

Ware thus accuses John McCain -- American hero, frequent critic of the administration, and frequent critic of the administration's handling of the war -- of bad faith and intellectual dishonesty. ...

When a reporter becomes this much of an advocate, he should no longer cover the story. If CNN were a credible news organization, it would reassign Ware.

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McCain Talks, Walk
Jules Crittenden

Leftie blogs snark on it:  Yeah, him and who’s Army?  But I haven’t seen any of them do that. *  Imagine, forcing the military to venture out into the open!  How dare Arizona have an economy!

McCain says, a shocker for any regular AP readers, that the American people may not be getting the full picture on the success of the surge. 

McCain gets heckled by the pro-al-Qaeda press, who don’t know which Baghdad neighborhood he’s talking about.  Meanwhile, some pols prefer to view Iraq from another vantage point.

The big news is, McCain’s just set a new bar for presidential candidates, reps and senators.  Hillary, Obama, Rudy, Mitt, Pelosi, Reid … maybe even John Kerry and Ted Kennedy, though we know Kerry likes to spend as little time as possible in war zones and Kennedy, I’m not sure he’s ever been near one.  You want to talk the talk on Iraq, you must walk the walk.   And unless you get blown up by a car bomb, you may then be forced to acknowledge … you know.

The president of the United States?  Contrary to what a lot of his opponents in and out of government might think, he is actually more important than all of the abovementioned parties.  But if FDR and Churchill could meet in the middle of the U-boat infested Atlantic, I don’t see why George Bush can’t wander through a Baghdad market.  ...

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Michael Ware Needs To Come Home
Rick Moran

I’m late to this story on Michael Ware, the CNN reporter who supposedly “heckled” Senators McCain and Graham in Baghdad during their press conference. The Powerline boys have been all over the story, including an interview with Soledad O’Brien where Ware denies the story.

Ware was reported to have laughed and mocked comments being made by Graham and McCain while the press conference was underway. In the O’Brien interview, he denies heckling anyone and, given my understanding of the word, I would be forced to agree with him if all he did was act like an ass, laughing and carrying on during the presser. If he had shouted out from the audience and interrupted the press conference, that would have been considered “heckling.” So it appears that Drudge doesn’t know what the word means – not surprising since it isn’t the first time his headlines have failed to jive with the story being reported.

Ware claims he never got to ask a question and, in fact, just as he raised his hand to do so, the press conference ended. Since Ware knows the tape of the presser is going to be shown and scrutinized, one would have to say at this point that he is telling the truth – at least the truth as he perceives it to be.

But I also believe that the story itself is true; that Ware – an irreverent sort of fellow who tries to project the hard-bitten, world-weary, cynical war reporter image – no doubt laughed and mocked the politicians who were trying to put the best face on what is still a very dicey situation in Baghdad. ...

In a very real way, Senator McCain was correct when he said that the American people are not getting the full story of what is happening since the surge began in Iraq. But it’s not information about reduced attacks on civilians or fewer sectarian murders that is the real story – although we shouldn’t dismiss them entirely. The real story is what is happening below the surface among the people; a slow, painful, tentative walkback from the abyss of civil war and sectarian conflict. Our military cannot affect this aspect of the struggle directly. But their efforts are having an affect, that much is clear. ...

CNN should recall Mr. Ware and never send him back. He has done an impossible job in an impossible place for far too long. It’s time to bring Michael Ware home.

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Video: CNN reporter denies heckling McCain;
Update: Press conference video appears to support Ware
Allahpundit

Sort of. He denies having said anything at the press conference — but strictly speaking, he wasn’t accused of having said anything. Here’s what Drudge reported:

During a live press conference in Baghdad, Senators McCain and Graham were heckled by CNN reporter Michael Ware. An official at the press conference called Ware’s conduct “outrageous,” saying, “here you have two United States Senators in Bagdad giving first-hand reports while Ware is laughing and mocking their comments. I’ve never witnessed such disrespect. This guy is an activist not a reporter.”

It sounds like he may have been laughing theatrically when they were talking about walking around Baghdad. Soledad O’Brien asks him point blank if he was laughing, and he ducks the question by insisting that he never said a word. In which case, it might be hard to tell what happened from the video of the press conference that he’s encouraging people to look at.

The video’s nowhere to be found yet, incidentally. Maybe it’ll be available at MNF-I sometime later today.

I like the dramatic contempt in his voice when he says the word “blog,” too. Although not as much as I like the reaction it must have generated in blog-hatin’ Matt Drudge. ...

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Video: Rangel admits Dems abused war funding bill
Ian Schwartz

Congressman Charles Rangel admitted Dems added tons of pork, along with a withdrawal date, because they “needed the votes.” So, Democrats basically sold their votes on the war for a few piles of cash.

Nice. Ethical. Thank you for cleaning up the culture of corruption, Democrats.

MR. RUSSERT: Chairman Rangel, welcome back to MEET THE PRESS. Want to talk about your book in a second, but let me start with the war. The House voted for funding for the war with a date certain, March of ‘08, to begin a withdrawal of U.S. troops. But in that bill was $20 billion of so-called pork, money for cricket infestation, tours of the Capitol, security at the National Convention, peanut crops. Why would the Democrats put that kind of money in such a serious bill?

REP. CHARLES B. RANGEL (D-NY): Because they needed the votes. That bill, we lost so many Democrats, one, because people thought we went too far and others because we didn’t go far enough. And so a lot of things had to go into a bill that certainly those of us who respect great legislation did not want in there. But the real question was, were we doing something to stop this immoral war and what could we do instead of doing nothing except do what the president asks us to do? I think the most important thing and the worst thing that’s ever happened to this country in recent history is getting involved in the Middle East, and I didn’t care what was in that bill if there was anything to slow down, to, to say what the American people said in the last election, “Get out of Iraq!”

MR. RUSSERT: If you want to stop the war, why not just simply cut all the funding off?

REP. RANGEL: Because you don’t have the vote to do it. There’s some people who believe that if you cut all the funding off, you leave our soldiers and, and, and military people exposed, and that they’d have no money and then we’d go back to the scene we had in Vietnam where we’re fleeing by helicopter. And so it’s all compromised. That’s what legislation’s all about, and you have to make the best moral and conscious decision.

(Full transcript)

Update (AP): Obama’s on the same page as Rangel. ...