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Friday, May 09, 2008
Rich Galen :: Townhall.com Columnist
Good News From Iraq
by Rich Galen
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Good news is hard to find coming out of Iraq. In fact, any news coming out of Iraq is hard to find because a good deal of the news is good and therefore is not news.

Dear Mr. Mullings:

County, Indiana tried to figure out how to steal the election for Obama, but what in the world did that first sentence mean?

ASPA - American Sentence Parsers Association.

You know the old saying, "No news is good news?"

Yes. We believe we may have heard, read, or seen that once or twice in our lifetimes.

Well, when it comes to Iraq, the saying is turned on its head: "Good news is no news."

Good one.

Word flashed across the Internet late yesterday afternoon that Iraqi forces had captured a guy named Abu Ayyub al-Masri in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul.

Who is Abu Ayyub al-Masri?

Al-Masri is the head of Al-Qaeda in Iraq, is all. According to Al Jazeera: He is the successor to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian who was killed by a US air attack in 2006.

One of the first reporters to break the story was Fox's National Security reporter (and Mullfave) Catherine Herridge who correctly pointed out that it was Iraqi TV and the Iraqi government which had announced this - not the US military, which was being careful to distance itself from the report until independent confirmation could be obtained.

According to Reuters, "In late June 2006 the United States put a bounty of $5 million on al-Masri's head."

Given the current state of the US Dollar, that is now about $1.57 in 2008 dollars, but never mind.

Whether or not the Iraqis have the right guy, the broader point is that the central government is carrying the fight to the insurgents. If al-Masri wasn't snagged last night, he will be at some point.

While there are no straight lines in nature, the Iraqis are taking control of their country. Absent a unilateral departure of American and coalition forces (if-you-know-what-I-mean-and-I-think-you-do) Iraq will be a peaceful, successful, democratic ally of the West.

New Topic:

NOTE: The following actually had the approval of the Mullings Director of Standards & Practices!

What with this being Friday and all we, at Mullings Central, have a hard time being too serious for the entirety of the 750 word effort, therefore we bring to you the HEADLINE OF THE MILLENIUM!

I know the MILLENIUM is only about eight years in, but I'm telling you your great-great-great-great grandchildren will remember this one as the best headline. Continued...
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About The Author

Rich Galen has been a press secretary to Dan Quayle and Newt Gingrich. Rich Galen currently works as a journalist and writes at Mullings.com

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(16 comments so Far)
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Reply # 1
Date: May 17, 2008 - 8:54 AM EST
Accent the positive....
Thank you, Mr. Gallen! Two good replies by Steve. The liberals don't like GOOD NEWS about Iraq!
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Reply # 2
Date: May 12, 2008 - 12:59 AM EST
ApolloSpeaks
Thank you for going positive instead of negative by pointing out that Al Qaida is getting its butt kicked in Iraq.

Yes, Iran has become more powerful since we took out Saddam but I should point out that Iran has been working on its nukes since before Gulf War II. I'm not at all sure that our actions resulted in any acceleration of Iran's covert nuke program nor its hegemonic power. They were developing nukes anyway with Saddam still in power. There secret just got revealed before they were ready.

If we hadn't taken out Saddam, then I'm confident that Iran would have eventually. Iraq and Iran were already in an arms race before we got there and Iran wants to expand its Shiite caliphate to Iraq. That's why Saddam attacked Iran. Saddam feared the spreading of the Shiite Iranian revolution to Iraq due to Iraq's high population of Shiites.

Additionally, our occupation of Iraq has not been a disaster by any stretch of the imagination. Mistakes were made but name one war without mistakes.

Perhaps you recall the dire predictions of mass casualities by the anti-war crowd prior to Gulf Wars I and II. They never materialized. If we knew before the invasion that only 4083 troops would be lost altogether, then we would have concluded that that was an acceptable loss compared to the benefits of toppling Saddam.

Please don't exaggerate the importance of the mistakes. The media has given way too little time to extolling the successes of the War on Terror - especially in Iraq.
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