Strategy Page brings us this news about the state of the battle against al Qaeda in Iraq:
April 22, 2008: Between mid-March and mid-April, al Qaeda suffered major losses in Iraq. American and Iraqi troops killed or captured 53 al Qaeda leaders. These include men in charge of entire cities (or portions of large cities like Mosul or Baghdad), as well as men in charge of various aspects of terror operations (making bombs, placing them or minding the bombers).
Most important, nine of the ten most senior men involved were captured, and interrogated. This led to locating more al Qaeda staff and assets. Hundreds of weapons and explosives caches have been discovered this year as a result of interrogating captured terrorists. The result has been a sharp fall in suicide bomber attacks, and the ones still carried out are against soft targets (civilians), including the recent funeral of two men earlier killed by terrorists. This was part of an al Qaeda campaign to force Sunni Arabs to switch sides again and support terrorism. But these attacks have the opposite effect, causing more hatred for al Qaeda.
This is pretty significant news, I should think, and I thought those readers concerned about the war would want to know it. I'm pretty sure you haven't heard it on CBS, ABC, NBC, or CNN or read about it in Newsweek, Time, U.S. News or in the major papers. For those media outlets the only significant news about Iraq, apparently, is news about setbacks and American casualties.
RLC
