Media Naysayers
Yesterday, we lost a Blackhawk and the media started describing the war as if it was on the verge of being lost. Ahem. We lost one Blackhawk. We took over most of Iraq, and are within 50 miles of Baghdad.

Ah, Baghdad. The media will soon - if they aren't already - be talking about Bagdhad like its going to be Mogadishu all over again, only bigger, larger and much, much worse. Baloney, says retired military officer and novelist Ralph Peters in a wonderful column today:

Despite the steady progress of our troops, we continue to hear dire warnings about an impending bloodbath in Baghdad, once Saddam lures us into the streets of his ultimate fortress, his "Stalingrad" on the Euphrates. Just a minute there, Herr Professor. Calm down, Dr. Think Tank. I'm just a former career soldier, so I don't understand military operations the way academics and pundits do. Explain something to me, slowly and clearly: Why on earth would Gen. Tommy Franks do exactly what Saddam wants, and send our forces charging into the streets of Baghdad? We're not stupid - or Russian - for God's sake. We're not going to slug down a couple of bottles of vodka apiece and drive straight into Grozniy while Chechens pick off our tanks and troops at their leisure. We are going to make the rules in Baghdad, not Saddam. I simply cannot understand why anyone outside of Ba'ath Party headquarters imagines we would feel compelled to fight house-to-house in Baghdad, destroying the city, putting civilian lives at risk and throwing away our soldiers.

When the right opportunities present themselves, our forces will swoop in on pinpoint raids. And no, we're not talking about "Black Hawk Down II." Anyway, people tend to forget that, in Mogadishu, we actually won the tactical battle overwhelmingly - 20 dead Americans, a thousand dead Somali militiamen. At the end of that fight, we had thoroughly broken "General" Aideed's forces. Then President Bill Clinton, the most frightened man on earth, declared defeat. The U.S. Army's Rangers were ordered home in humiliation, after winning a tough but enormous victory. President Bush may have his faults, but he ain't going to cut and run on our men and women in uniform. Yeah, I'm being cocky today. Because I'm sick of being told how brilliant our enemies are and how our troops are going to get whupped up on by some Kmart Hitler. Might I pause in my literary endeavors to point out that, while our troops are approaching Baghdad, Iraq's Republican Guards are still quite a distance from Washington, D.C.?

Heh. And might I add, in Mogadishu, the Rangers had been denied armor by the Clinton administration. We'll have no such problem in Iraq.