Iraqi Military Half Way There

Excellent news...

TIKRIT - The Iraqi Army took an important step forward Aug. 8 by marking the halfway point for division headquarters to take the lead for security operations throughout the country.

The 4th Iraqi Army Division assumed control of their area of responsibility, encompassing regions spanning three of Iraq's northern provinces, Salah Ad Din, Sulaymaniyah and Kirkuk provinces.

Its area of responsibility includes the cities of Tikrit, Kirkuk, Bayji and Samarra, as well as the major oil and electrical infrastructure in northern Iraq.

The 4th IA Division is the fifth of 10 Iraqi Army divisions to take control over Iraqi units in their assigned regions. In addition, there have been 25 brigades and 85 battalions assuming operational command and control to date.

"Today is a day of dignity for us Iraqis who are loyal to the motherland," said Lt. Gen. Abdul-Aziz Abdel-Rahman al-Mufti, commander of the 4th Iraqi Army Division. "We will not stop or look back," he said.

Two years ago, armed only with a briefcase and a few names, Aziz was asked to build a division from scratch. Today he stood before the Iraqi Minister of Defense Abdul Qadir Mohammed Jasim and dozens of his subordinate officers to claim the area that he and his men will fight for.

I've said it before, but I'll say it again: Our mission in Iraq is not necessarily to defeat the terrorists. Our mission in Iraq has always been to leave that country with a democratically-elected government that controls a military capable of protecting that government and the people from terrorists. The government is in place, and now we're halfway done with getting the military part of things straightened out. Once that's done the vast majority of our troops deployed to Iraq can come home.

Still a lot of hard work ahead, but we're making progress month by month. Of course, if we'd listened to Democrats like Rep. John Murtha we wouldn't be halfway done right now. We would have abandoned the Iraqis already. Sure that would have brought our troops home for the short term, but it would have handed our enemies in Iraq and the middle east another victory along the lines of the one Bill Clinton handed them when he ordered a cut-and-run from Somalia.

We all know what that led to.

Many critics of the war in Iraq talk of the war, in sanctimonious terms, as though it were a failure and that the fact that it is a failure is common knowledge. Personally, I don't know anything about failure in Iraq. Certainly things haven't gone perfectly, but in what war have things gone perfectly? What is true in Iraq is this: Despite the violence and carnage caused by religious zealots who don't want to see a democracy flourish in the middle of the middle east, we have succeeded in overthrowing a cruel dictator, setting up a democratic government and are halfway done with training a military to protect that government.

We can see the light at the end of the tunnel now, but don't expect the war critics who have spent years now investing themselves in the idea of Iraq as a failure to admit to that.