Jeff Emanuel, special operations veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom, is now a journalist embedded with the U.S. military in Iraq. His report in today's Weekly Standard describes a mission to search out al Qaeda in the Tigris river valley. This bit struck me.
OPERATION MARNE HUSKEY is a division-sized offensive operation focused on both hammering insurgents in the area and stepping up the interdiction of weapons and fighters bound for Baghdad. Named in part after the 3rd ID (nicknamed the "Marne" Division), Operation Marne Huskey is an integral part of Operation Phantom Strike, a massive coalition effort to hunt down and torment insurgents in the weeks before General Petraeus's September testimony to Congress. Phantom Strike not only seeks to minimize any insurgent attempts at headline-grabbing attacks during this sensitive period, but also takes the fight to the known and suspected terrorists' turf, pounding them with aviation- and artillery-borne firepower and increasing ground troops' activities in the Diyala and Baghdad areas.
Our Soldiers and Marines know that they're fighting the propaganda war as well as the shooting war. How must they feel, knowing that those headline-grabbing attacks they've been risking their lives to prevent are intended above all to influence our congressional Democrats? The Democrats, by focusing on violence in Iraq as their rationale to cut funding for the war, are clearly responding to attacks in a way that encourages more of them.
But the surge has reduced the level of violence. Soldiers and Marines have been fighting and sometimes dying to prevent those headline-grabbing attacks. By doing that they hope to deny congressional Democrats the political will to cut off funds and hand victory to al Qaeda, mortal enemies of our Soldiers, Marines, and us.
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