Don't miss Michael Fumento's cover story from the new Weekly Standard, from on the ground in Al Anbar Province, Iraq. Fumento has completed three different embeds in Ramadi and Falluja, and without sugarcoating anything, he's cautiously optimistic. Pack a lunch. And don't tell Dennis Kucinich.
...Ramadi is both a litmus test for the counterinsurgency effort in Iraq and a laboratory. If we can defeat the insurgent and terrorist forces here, there is no place we cannot defeat them. And from what I found, we are defeating them. It's painfully slow, and our men there are still dying in inordinate numbers from a broad variety of attacks. But a multitude of factors, including tribal cooperation, the continual introduction of more Iraqi army and police, the beginning of public works projects, the building of more Forward Operating Bases (FOBs), the installation of more small operational posts (OPs), and plunking down company-sized Combat Operation Posts (COPs) smack in the middle of hostile territory are destroying both the size and the mobility of the enemy. This time the rats are dying in place.Posted by dan at November 21, 2006 2:12 AM