B36 News - 07 September 2006

I finished reading through the 23 page National Strategy for Combating Terrorism yesterday and I found it interesting that the internet played a moderately prominent role in the strategy. Below is one passage I found particularly interesting:

To counter terrorist use of the Internet as a virtual sanctuary, we will discredit terrorist propaganda by promoting truthful and peaceful messages.

My mission to help people understand that we're winning the war and things are going well continues.

Big OTF Update
Telling you all about the progress that's being made with Operation Together Forward is one thing, but being able to show you is quite another. The images below were released in MG Caldwell's press briefing yesterday and I think they do an outstanding job of explaining just what kind of successful impact we're having.This graph shows simple numbers of casualties in Baghdad. Can you guess which month OTF swung into high gear?
This map shows the areas of Baghdad that OTF has been enacted in. Note how in later pictures, these areas show remarkable decreases in violence.
Do I really need to set this one up?
While not a part of OTF, I wanted to include this picture to show how much progress we've made transitioning security in Iraq back to the Iraqis. And now that the IGFC has been activated the divisions (the flags w/ "XX" on top) will roll up under the Iraqi government rather than the MNF-I. Keep an eye on this if you want to predict when we're going to be done here.

In the same press conference, this video showing an airstrike on an bad guy mortar team was released. (Hat-tip to DJ Elliott)


DoS Iraq Weekly Report
In a seperate weekly report released by the Department of State, we still see that progress continues to march in Iraq. This weekly report gives a good outlook on the whole picture in Iraq rather than just focusing on the military efforts. The highlights of this report include many of the stories that I published earlier in the week, but some that I didn't. I'd recommend checking this one out on a regular basis.