Nightly Ramble: Troup Surge; Oil Keeps Falling; Obama Makes Like a Brick in the Wall; More

• 90 Billion BBLsof oil under the ice.
• So, Obama went to the wall today. We’re suppsoed to be impressed by the turnout. Perhaps before you get too impressed with how well Germans react to his posturing, perhaps you’ll be

Marie Colvin at The London Times, reports on troop movements and successes in Iraq. Of course nobody in the domestic press has bothered to notice, since apparently success isn’t the picture the domestic mainstream media has decided it wants

THERE’S BEEN a relative lull in news coverage and debate about Iraq in recent weeks — which is odd, because May could turn out to have been one of the most important months of the war. While Washington’s attention has

Interesting word from basra by way of the London Times:

Young women are daring to wear jeans, soldiers listen to pop music on their mobile phones and bands are performing at wedding parties again.

All across Iraq’s second city

BAGHDAD —FOX- Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice mocked anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr as a coward on Sunday, hours after the radical leader threatened to declare war unless U.S. and Iraqi forces end a military crackdown on his followers.

Rice, in

Karl at Protein Wisdom:

With the Iraqi Army defeating Moqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army in Basra, the L.A. Times has moved on to tell its readers how terrible things might get in Najaf.  Buried in the middle of the piece,

• Has anyone noticed? Ace did… Obama’s back to wearing a flag pin. Boy, I could make a whole seperate post on the stuff we have on file from when this subject first came up. So does Ben Smith. My

Austin Bay, who I quote far too little:

Realclearpolitics.com featured last week’s Creators Syndicate newspaper column and the gents at Powerline commented. As the column attests, I saw the Basra and east Baghdad counter-militia operations very differently from the

Word this morning from the London Times that Iran had forces on the ground at Basra:

IRANIAN forces were involved in the recent battle for Basra, General David Petraeus, the US commander in Iraq, is expected to tell Congress this

MSNBC is saying:

BAGHDAD – Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr on Sunday ordered his fighters off the streets nationwide and called on the government to stop raids against his followers and free them from prison.

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki issued a

Coalition targets al-Qaeda in Iraq networks; two terrorists killed, two detained

Posted: 12 Feb 2008 06:18 AM CST

BAGHDAD, Iraq (Feb. 12, 2008) – Coalition forces killed two terrorists and detained two suspects Monday and today during operations to disrupt

Defense Dept. announces Marine units for Afghanistan deployment

Posted: 15 Jan 2008 10:30 AM CST

WASHINGTON, D.C. (Jan. 15, 2008) â?? The Secretary of Defense has recommended and the President has approved the deployment of additional units to Afghanistan in

COALITION FORCES DISRUPT AL KUT CRIMINAL ELEMENT NETWORKS, 11 TERRORISTS KILLED

Posted: 27 Dec 2007 04:23 AM CST

COALITION FORCES DISRUPT AL KUT CRIMINAL ELEMENT NETWORKS, 11 TERRORISTS KILLED

IRAQI POLICE UNCOVER MAJOR WEAPONS CACHE

Posted: 26 Dec 2007 07:43

MNC-I SOLDIER DIES FROM NON-COMBAT RELATED INJURY

Posted: 17 Dec 2007 05:23 AM CST

MNC-I SOLDIER DIES FROM NON-COMBAT RELATED INJURY

BY CHARGÉ D’AFFAIRES PATRICIA A. BUTENIS AND GENERAL DAVID H. PETRAEUS ON THE TRANSFER OF SECURITY RESPONSIBILITY FOR BASRA

I note with some interest today that Michael Yon has released another one of his columns from Iraq.

America seems to be under a glass dome which allows few hard facts from the field to filter in unless they are