See previous: 2007.05.26 Iraq/Iran Roundup

Below the fold (newest items at the top):

• Today's "Day by Day"
• Michael Yon's Memorial Day Message from Iraq
• Paranoia grips Taliban after Dadullah’s killing
• U.S. Military Rescues 42 Iraqis From Al Qaeda Prison
  • That unmentioned al-Qaeda torture handbook is being used
• Happy Memorial Day
• NYT survey: Most Iraqis, military leaders predict chaos if U.S. pulls out
• Antiwar base directs wrath at Democrats

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A Memorial Day Message 
Michael Yon

Memorial Day weekend is upon us. I am out here in Anbar Province with Task Force 2-7 Infantry. The area around Hit (pronounced “heat”) is so quiet previous units likely would not recognize the still. There was a small IED incident this morning, and the explosion was a direct hit, but the bomb was so small that mechanics had the vehicle back in shape by late afternoon. Calm truly has fallen on this city.

Dishes are appearing on rooftops and people are communicating more freely.  During today’s prayers, one mosque announced that divorce is bad and that parents should take care of their children. One mosque cried about Christians and Jews, while yet another announced that Al-Jazeera is lying and people should not watch it. 

Long-time readers know that I deliver bad news with the good. I was first to write that parts of Iraq were in civil war back in February 2005, well over a year before mainstream outlets started reporting the same. I was also the first to report, back in 2005, that Mosul was making a turn for the better. Mainstream outlets hardly picked up on that story, however, although the turn was easy to see for anyone who was there. When I returned from Afghanistan in the spring of 2006, after writing about the growing threat of a resurgent Taliban, bankrolled with profits from the heroin trade, I wrote that parts of our own military were censoring media in Iraq. The recent skirmishing over blogging from Iraq supports that contention. These reminders are for new readers who do not believe that a province that most media outlets had put at the top of the “hopelessly lost” column is actually turning a corner for the better. ...

Read the whole thing, and please don't forget that Mike's work is entirely reader-supported; send him a little something if you can.

Glenn Reynolds and John Hinderaker both have excellent related posts, worth checking out for the pictures they found if for no other reason.

Paranoia grips Taliban after Dadullah’s killing
Allahpundit

The Economist reported on the phenomenon 10 days ago, noting, “There are suggestions he may have been betrayed. Certainly Western commanders are not going to do anything to allay the paranoia over internal security evident in Taliban ranks. American forces were watching Dadullah from the moment he crossed the Pakistani border into Helmand province on May 10th; they killed him within 24 hours.” Two days after he was killed, a suicide bomber detonated in Peshawar, Pakistan, near the Afghan border; taped to what was left of his leg was a message that “U.S. spies” would end up the same way as people killed in the attack.

Now the Guardian weighs in. Paranoia does indeed strike deep: ...

U.S. Military Rescues 42 Iraqis From Al Qaeda Prison

BAGHDAD —  U.S. forces rescued 42 Iraqi civilians Sunday from an Al Qaeda hide-out northeast of Baghdad, including some who showed signs of torture and broken bones, a senior U.S. official said.

Maj. Gen. William Caldwell, the top U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad, said it was the largest number of detained Iraqis ever found in a single Al Qaeda hide-out. Some among the 42 had been held as long as four months, he said.

Details were incomplete, but Caldwell said some of the freed Iraqis were being transported to medical facilities for treatment of their injuries. There were no indications that Americans had been held at the hide-out, he said. It was not immediately clear whether any Al Qaeda figures were captured.

The discovery was unrelated to a search south of Baghdad for two missing U.S. soldiers.

U.S. forces previously have found a number of houses used by Al Qaeda for detention, including some where prisoners showed signs of torture. But the hide-out raided Sunday in Diyala province was the largest, Caldwell said in a telephone interview. He declined to be more specific about the location, citing security reasons. ...

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Don Surber notes:

That unmentioned al-Qaeda torture handbook is being used

Happy Memorial Day
Jules Crittenden

I thought body counts went out with the Vietnam War.  The AP is kicking off Memorial Day weekend with a fresh body count in Iraq.

How come no mention of Americans killed in Afghanistan since last Memorial Day?

The AP story leads with the number of new graves opened for dead American soldiers since Memorial Day last, but only those in Iraq.  Why this slight? Are the dead in Afghanistan not worthy of respect in the eyes of the Associated Press?  It is possible that this article is not about honoring the dead at all, or even about reporting the news, but just another thinly veiled editorial attack on the Bush administration?  Would the Associated Press be so callous as to use American dead in this manner, as a political tool?

I’m beginning to get the impression there is nothing more important to the Associated Press in its Iraq reportage than the number of “American soldiers killed in this unpopular war.”  That phrase, with a number, is typically trotted no later than graph three in AP stories. It’s as though the body count is the sole measure upon which all decisions and action must turn. There certainly has been no effort by the Associated Press, or other major news organizations on the ground in Iraq, to examine progress in anything but the most dismissive manner, with a quick revert to body count. ...

NYT survey: Most Iraqis, military
leaders predict chaos if U.S. pulls out
Allahpundit

They interviewed intel experts and politicians too, but the consensus seems to have been strongest among Iraqi pols and citizens and U.S. military commanders — the groups closest to the facts on the ground, oddly enough. In fact, even most of Bush’s critics agree that things will get worse; they simply tend not to believe it’ll be too bad or last very long.

Read all of this one, if only because the howling from Rick Ellensburg and company about the Times “shilling” for the administration by publishing it will be shrill and savory. The different camps tend to split three ways: those who would keep American troops in the field until the Iraqi army is ready and terrorist attacks are down; those who would force the Iraqi government to assume responsibility by pulling American troops back, but only to bases in Iraq so they’re not too far away; and those who would would force them to assume responsibility by quickly withdrawing from the country. The last camp seems to consist mainly of Jack Murtha and the Sadrists, who have some pretty definite ideas about who it is who’ll be handling most of those new responsibilities.

There’s a lot of quotable material — note in particular what Anthony Cordesman has to say about which group in all this is best positioned and best motivated to decide when it’s time to go — but I’ll leave you with this,  ...

Antiwar base directs wrath at Democrats
By Donald Lambro, The Washington Times

The bitter battle between the Democratic Congress and President Bush over Iraq war funding may be over for now, but another fight has erupted between Democrats and members of the antiwar base who say they were betrayed by their party.

Democratic leaders told their rank-and-file supporters Friday they had no choice but to give up efforts to tie a troop-withdrawal deadline to an emergency appropriations bill. Mr. Bush on Friday signed the bill that pays for U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan until the end of the fiscal year, Sept. 30.

Many antiwar activists and bloggers condemned the Democrats' retreat and said their patience with party leadership was wearing thin.

"Today America watched a Democratic Party kick them square in the teeth -- all in order to continue the most unpopular war in a generation," Democratic campaign strategist David Sirota wrote Friday on the left-wing Huffington Post Web site. "We gave them our heart; they gave President Bush a blank check.

"That will make May 24, 2007, a dark day ... when Democrats in Washington not only continued the war they promised to end, but happily went on record declaring that they believe in their hearts that government's role is to ignore the will of the American people," Mr. Sirota wrote.  ...