Posted By:
Catherine Moy
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News is never pretty in a war zone. But a wave of positive developments, brought to all of us from America’s troops’ determination, is overwhelming the naysayers and peddlers of negativism.
Michael Yon, among the best reporters in the war zone, reports today that al Qaida is defeated. We’ve heard that the evil organization has failed in its bloody plan to cause an all-out civil war between Sunnis and Shiites. American commanders and diplomats have told us this.

But now the Iraqi Islamic Party has announced the death-knell of al Qaida. Michael Yon reports:

“Al Qaeda in Iraq is defeated,” according to Sheik Omar Jabouri, spokesman for the Iraqi Islamic Party and a member of the widespread and influential Jabouri Tribe. Speaking through an interpreter at a 31 October meeting at the Iraqi Islamic Party headquarters in downtown Baghdad, Sheik Omar said that al Qaeda had been “defeated mentally, and therefore is defeated physically,” referring to how clear it has become that the terrorist group’s tactics have backfired. Operatives who could once disappear back into the crowd after committing an increasingly atrocious attack no longer find safe haven among the Iraqis who live in the southern part of Baghdad.  They are being hunted down and killed.  Or, if they are lucky, captured by Americans.
Colonel Ricky Gibbs, the American brigade commander with responsibility for the Rashid District in south Baghdad today told me, “So goes South Baghdad goes Baghdad.” General Petraeus had told me similar things about the importance of South Baghdad. In fact, Rashid is quickly developing into what might be one of the final serious battlegrounds of the war.

So where are the headlines? Did the New York Times, which has so often divulged top secrete programs to protect Americans, miss this story?

If you want the real news, you must go to Michael Yon Online
Congratulations Gen. David Petraeus and all of our troops. And good work, Michael.