stevew's Journal: It's been awhile - Iraq on my mind too.

It's been many months since I put anything in here. I just re-read some of my original posts that were concurrent with the Iraqi war.

As we sit here today - we caught Saddam about two weeks ago, and that turned out to be an intelligence bonanza. There have been tons of raids and we've apparently rounded up a goodly number of the top portion of the Iraqi resistance. (This doesn't account for the Al Qaeda types..) The numbers I here are that the attacks have dropped from 40 odd a day to 13-15 a day. That's a 60%+ reduction, but is it reported in the media - NOPE.

I also spend a fair amount of time reading various Iraqi bloggers. You get a much different point of view for these folks. They tend to be educated, and more aware of the outside world. Some are friendly to our efforts, others are hostile, but even they seem to look forward to a free Iraq.

Things haven't gone as well in Iraq as I'd hoped due to the constant harrassment, but it seems like the capture of Sadam was a turning point in many ways. I think things are going to get better faster there now.

Finally, we have the Al Qaeda threat. We are at "high" alert now. There are reports of aircraft not making the journey from either Europe or Mexico almost daily right now. Al Qaeda has threatened to strike the US before February. I've also heard that some attmpts have already been snuffed that the public just isn't aware of yet.

This casts an interesting light on the Iraq situation. One group that is still causing the harassment are Al Qaeda simpathizers (if not Al Qaeda themselves..) At least they are THERE picking on Americans with guns that know how to use them! They are not HERE.

The Democrats are going to try "Are you safer today than on 9/10/2001?" as a campaign pillar. Well, we haven't been attacked, and we ARE on the watch for something nasty. By that example - yes we are!