Gordon Cucullu, retired U.S. Army officer and a member of Benador Associates, writes in the New York Post of his visit to Iraq.
March 20, 2007 -- 'I WALKED down the streets of Ramadi a few days ago, in a soft cap eating an ice cream with the mayor on one side of me and the police chief on the other, having a conversation." This simple act, Gen. David Petraeus told me, would have been "unthinkable" just a few months ago. "And nobody shot at us," he added.
According to Mr. Cucullu, the surge is working and he explains why in his column.
The sheiks have seen that the al Qaeda delivers only violence and misery. They are throwing their lot in with the new government - for example, encouraging their young men to join the Iraqi police force and army. (They are responding in droves.)
Petraeus has his troops applying a similar formula in Baghdad's Sadr City: "We're clearing it neighborhood by neighborhood." Troops move in - mainly U.S. soldiers and Marines supported by Iraqi forces, although that ratio is reversed in some areas - and stay. They are not transiting back to large, remote bases but are now living with the people they have come to protect. The results, Petraeus says, have been "dramatic."
"We're using 'soft knock' clearing procedures and bringing the locals in on our side," he notes. By being in the neighborhoods, getting to know the people and winning their trust, the soldiers have allowed the people to turn against the al Qaeda terrorists, whom they fear and loathe. Petraeus says his goal is to pull al Qaeda out "by its roots, wherever it tries to take hold."
It seems to be lost on the Democratic majority in congress that we are fighting al Qaeda in Iraq. We are in a war on terror, and our soldiers are fighting our terrorist enemies every day. Al Qaeda is the group responsible for bringing down the twin towers in lower Manhattan. Under the leadership of General David Petraeus our soldiers are fighting al Qaeda and they're fighting them in Iraq.
General Petraeus is considered one of the brightest and most capable officers in the Army, a fact born out by the successes of his previous tour of duty near the Syrian border. He is cautiously optimistic. Maybe he is also Bush's General Grant.
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