Iraq: All But Won

Jack Kelly had a great editorial in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette this morning, in which he discusses the embarrassing failures of terrorists in Iraq and the inevitability of complete victory. In an interview with The Spectator earlier in February, Lt. Col. Jim Stockmoe, chief intelligence officer for the First Infantry Division, compared one story with the movie “Dumb and Dumber:”

"There were three brothers down in Baghdad who had a mortar tube and were firing into the Green Zone," Stockmoe said. "They were storing the mortar rounds in the car engine compartment and the rounds got overheated. Two of these clowns dropped them in the tube and they exploded, blowing their legs off."

The surviving brother sought refuge in a nearby house, but the occupants "beat the crap out of him and turned him over to the Iraqi police.

Stockmoe heard so many similar stories that he created an Iraqi version of the “Darwin Awards.” Another paragraph in The Spectator interview that has gone unreported by the mainstream media is the following:

Zarkawi’s organisation is riddled with paranoia and division. Some of the guards who held Ken Bigley broke ranks and tried to help him escape. There was bitter dissent when Zarkawi and other insurgent leaders fled Fallujah and left their underlings to fight. Fear of betrayal has led to smaller cells operating ever more independently, preventing an overall insurgent strategy from developing.

Kelly goes on to comment about the poor performance of the general media (although I don’t think CNN or BBC will be issuing apologies anytime soon):

Those who get their news from the "mainstream" media are surprised by developments in Iraq, as they were surprised by our swift victory in Afghanistan, the sudden fall of Saddam Hussein, the success of the Afghan election and the success of the Iraqi election.

Journalists demand accountability from political leaders for "quagmires" which exist chiefly in the imagination of journalists. But when will journalists be held to account for getting every major development in the war on terror wrong?