It was that shining beacon of hope held up by President Bush in his speech on March 20th of this year to the City Club of Cleveland.
Speaking at the City Club of Cleveland, a free speech forum, the president said developments in Tal Afar show clear progress on the political, security and economic fronts and proof that the Iraqi people want to live in freedom.
Calling the northern Iraqi city with its diverse population “a microcosm of Iraq,” the president said its example “gives me confidence in our strategy.”
Tal Afar’s 200,000 residents lived under the intimidation of insurgents who were using the city as a base to organize, train and equip terror cells.
U.S. and Iraqi forces drove out the insurgents in “Operation Restore Rights,” in fall 2005. Government forces are now rebuilding housing, schools and other facilities. […]
“In this city, we see the outlines of the Iraq that we and the Iraqi people have been fighting for,” Bush said. “A free and secure people are getting back on their feet … (and) participating in government and civic life.” […]
Bush said the strategy for victory is working, and “we know it because the people of Tal Afar are showing their gratitude.” […]
Bush described how the situation in Tal Afar gave rise to the new “clear, hold and build” approach that’s being used throughout Iraq. That strategy builds on cooperation between coalition and Iraqi forces and new capabilities within Iraq’s forces, he said.
“Under this new approach, Iraqi and coalition forces would clear a city of the terrorists, leave well-trained Iraqi units behind to hold the city, and work with local leaders to build the economic and political infrastructure Iraqis need to live in freedom,” the president said.
That was the President on March 20th, explaining the success of our new strategy in Iraq, as evidenced by our success in Tal Afar. This is Tal Afar today:
TAL AFAR, Iraq (Reuters) -A suicide bomber killed 17 people and wounded 35 when he blew his car up in a market in the Iraqi northern city of Tal Afar on Tuesday, police said.
I take no particular satisfaction in pointing out that we’ve been had by Mr. Bush once more, and that Tal Afar isn’t the paradise of safety and security he claimed. I’m not happy to see him proven wrong once again about his strategery for Iraq. I merely want to point out that winning battles in a guerrilla war is not the same as winning the war.
We have gone into Tal Afar twice now and declared victory: in 2004 the 3rd Cavalry cleared out the local insurgents in Tal Afar, but as soon as the 3rd Cav left, those insurgents returned. Now the same thing has happened again. This last time, it was elements of the First Armored Division which drove out the “bad guys” and reinstated law and order, only to see history repeat itself when the city was returned to the control of units of the Iraqi security forces.
Tal Afar is not a success story. It is a ongoing repetitive tragedy with elements of farce. And the saddest thing is that out there wafting in the electronic ether are thousands of emails and blog posts which are still extolling this good news of Tal Afar as proof that we are winning the war in Iraq. That it is just that damn liberal media which refuses to report the good news because they hate President Bush. These people will remain blissfully ignorant of what’s become of George Bush’s touted success story, and the “liberal media” likely won’t disabuse them of that notion.
Because we don’t hear much reporting anymore about Iraq on the nightly news and the cable gabfests, I suspect that no one in the major media will take note of this “security incident” today in Tal Afar. Certainly none of our talking head pundits will. It’s just 17 more Iraqis who died, after all. They don’t have the same reverence for life that we do. They’re just a bunch of crazy muslim extremists murdering each other, and that doesn’t justify spoiling anyone’s supper hour, or upsetting their early evening trance while staring at Chris on MsNBC, Anderson on CNN, or Bill and Sean on Fox. No, the truth about Tal Afar will be ignored, and those who choose to believe in the Gospel of George will have no reason to have their faith challenged. And no reason to have to remember Tal Afar today.
But I will remember.
Tal Afar – my daughter, during the in-ogre-uration saw the photo of the little girl from Tal Afar who was orphaned as a result of one of the many “street patrol shooting accidents”.
KIng George does indeed have the Midas Flush
Everything he touches turns to shit.
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A second NEWSWEEK reporter, visiting Tall Afar independently, found other neighborhoods barricaded; Iraqi police warned that he might be killed by insurgents or their supporters if he went any farther.
What it is, though, like so many places in Iraq now, is a city increasingly divided along sectarian lines. The neighborhoods we patrolled were largely Shia; those our reporter found barricaded and dangerous were mostly Sunni.
“I’d say that zero percent of Bush’s talk about Tall Afar is true,” said Ahmed Sami, 45, a Sunni laborer. “They turned Shiite neighborhoods into havens, and Sunni neighborhoods into hells.”
Even in the Shia neighborhoods, people were far from satisfied. “This is all just an outdoor prison for us,” said school teacher Abu Muhammed. “We can’t even go as far as the market street up there.” He gestured to the top of his road, where the Ottoman fortress that dominates the town is located (and which we couldn’t visit due to a security scare, even though it holds the mayor’s office). “But what are they going to do, put a soldier in front of each Sunni house?”
US Destruction of 7 Bridges over the Euphrates
My earlier diaries about the battle of Tal Afar ::
● Iraq today :: Iron Fist replaces Operation Restoring Rights
● Balad 3-car bombs 85 killed & 110 wounded ¶
Tal Afar : Bomber Kills 8 ● Kabul Suicide Kills 12
● Wave of Violence in Central Iraq Kills over 180 Persons
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."▼ ▼ ▼ MY DIARY
I read John Pilger today. In that article in my dead-tree paper Pilger says what’s going on in Iraq right now is the El Salvador trick. What we see and here about as sectarian strife Pilger says is done by militias both Sunni and Shia, all of them bought and trained by the US clandestine services. I believe him.
It went the way of Friedman’s “Baghdad Spring”.
About six weeks ago the New Yorker had an excellent, and very long, piece eenitled “The Lessons of Tal Afar.” The article traced the history of U.S. troops there, the largely successful counter-insurgency tactics of the current U.S. Army command there — built up through the painstaking cultivation of relationships with local leaders — and how those relationships were about to be destroyed by the rotation of a new Army unit into the city. The article was pessimistic, noting that despite the progress and Bush’s claims, the police force, for example, was still overwhelmingly Shia and distrusted by the local Sunnis. Looks like the New Yorker called it.