On April 16, Coalition Forces discovered a cache of al-Qaeda documents and videos during a raid in Yusufiyah. News of that discovery was released by US Central Command (CENTCOM) on May 8. According to CENTCOM, the materials range from “plans to critiques including al Qaida in Iraq’s strategy in Baghdad, and how the terrorist organization lacks leadership, military capability and Iraqi support.” The recently translated documents show terrorists in Baghdad to be on their last legs. Al-Qaeda and their terrorist allies recognize that their primary goal can no longer be the reconquest of Baghdad; instead, like mosquitoes, they plan to annoy, irk, and bother peaceful Iraqis and coalition troops in the hopes of undermining our will.

                The terrorists realize that they are fighting a media war: their real targets are not civilians but cameras. “The policy followed by the brothers in Baghdad is a media oriented policy without a clear comprehensive plan to capture an area or an enemy center. Other word, the significance of the strategy of their work is to show in the media that the American and the government do not control the situation and there is resistance against them.  This policy dragged us to the type of operations that are attracted to the media, and we go to the streets from time to time for more possible noisy operations which follow the same direction.” Unlike the critical stance the memo takes regarding the ability of terrorists to inflict heavy damage, however, the memo notes that this shadow war has “large positive effects.” As blogger Ed Morrissey (captainsquartersblog.com) rightly notes, “This is a frank admission that the only effect that AQ has made is to convince the media -- presumably the American media -- that the situation cannot be controlled, despite their acknowledgement that they represent nothing more than a nuisance.” Numbers dwindling, al-Qaeda must rely on their friends in the American media to sustain fading hopes of a victorious insurgency. 

And their friends in the media will do just that. The most amazing story about the translated memo is the non-story. A quick Google News search for the term “CENTCOM” on May 10 revealed precisely eight stories on the translated documents (all from right wing blogs or small local newspapers). The ninth hit for “CENTCOM” was an unrelated Salon.com story entitled “How We Lost Iraq.” Nothing on the New York Times website. Nothing from the CBS News website. Nothing at CNN.com. CNN.com did, however, feature a story about American troops in Iraq entitled “It’s life and death every day,” along with a picture of a wounded soldier. Blogs on the left ignored the news as well. Nothing from Daily Kos. Nothing from Pandagon. It’s a sad state of affairs when good news in Iraq is inconvenient for at least half of the political spectrum.    

          Stability will progress nonetheless. Iraqi forces are increasingly taking part in the maintenance of their own security, and they are defeating the forces of Islamofascism every day. No matter what the mainstream media believes, Iraq isn’t Vietnam – history will see it as a successful and bold operation on behalf of human freedom. Slowly but surely, freedom is winning in Iraq, as even al-Qaeda recognizes.