A Memorial Day for the Middle East

To close out this Memorial Day, here're some links that have been building up in my bookmarks file to the sort of information that the Internet has become so essential for providing.

Arthur Chrenkoff has compiled a second post of good news from Iraq. This tidbit, although relatively superficial, is doubly surprising:

And the actor Gary Sinise, who played Lt Dan in "Forest Gump" had this to say after visiting Iraqi hospitals: "I also saw a beautiful interaction between our Soldiers and the Iraqi children. The kids I saw on my second trip to Iraq with Wayne Newton in November 2003 were loving our Soldiers and were so grateful to them for having liberated them from Saddam Hussein. It was a tremendous feeling to see these children hugging and kissing our Soldiers, cheering them with the thumbs up sign and in broken English saying, 'I love you'... Good things are happening over there [Iraq]. On the nightly news it looks like all hell is breaking loose, but I know, from being over there, there's another side to the story."

Meanwhile, readers of solely the mainstream media likely believe the wedding-day bombing to be a closed case (and not in a good way). Belmont Club begs to differ, and has been tracking information as it's become available:

The AP video shows a dead band member almost without a facial mark, peaceful and almost resting. (The very popular Baghdad singer?) Was he the only one killed? If the bomb hit the musician's tent, as indicated by the debris of musical instruments, where are the other dead men? Was there a third structure attacked, the figurative 100 Syrian fighters 'down the road'? Or were there just the two structures?

Personally, I'm skeptical even of the dead band member.

For his part, John Hawkins offers a broader view in "George Bush's Wildly Successful War on Terrorism":

Despite what we hear daily from the "nattering nabobs of negativity" in our country, we should be proud of the magnificent job that George W. Bush, his administration, our troops, and our intelligence services have done fighting the war on terrorism. In perhaps the two most perfectly executed military campaigns ever waged on this earth, our troops smashed the Taliban and Saddam Hussein's regime, freeing 50 million people from tyrants who had made the lives of their people into a living hell.

Although some will surely object that the war in Iraq oughtn't be included in analysis about the progress in the War on Terror, WorldNetDaily suggests that such objections are increasingly less justified. Among other things:

Recently translated documents captured by U.S. forces provide new evidence of a direct link between Saddam Hussein's regime and the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States.

Rosters of officers in Saddam's Fedayeen list Lt. Col. Ahmed Hikmat Shakir, who was present at the January 2000 al-Qaida "summit" in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, at which the 9-11 attacks were planned, the Wall Street Journal reports.

Also less and less justified is the notion that Iraq ought to be placed in U.N. hands. James Lileks focuses on Europe:

If anyone thinks Europe is “three or four more times as democratic as America” he is living in a dream world. A world where Russia lectures us about treatment of Muslim detainees, France is a model of nation-building, the Patriot act muzzles the press, and China is deeply concerned about the sovereignty of conquered nations.

And while I'm linking around, I'll close with a column from a mainstream outlet, the Providence Journal — albeit, criticizing the mainstream media. Peter Brown calls for perspective among his peers:

My news-media colleagues are largely responsible. We rightly press for explanations about why things happened and how they could have been averted. But we also legitimize the mentality that it's okay to come down from high after the battle and shoot the wounded. We feel the need to make sure someone takes the fall, regardless of whether anyone would have done the same thing, or worse, in his or her shoes.

It's a sick game. ...

It's a loss of perspective because the situation highlights why Rumsfeld should stay in office. We won the war. The United States took the prisoners, not the other way around.

We won it quickly and with many fewer U.S. casualties than even the optimists had predicted, not to mention the doomsday scenarios of the pessimists -- many of the same people now wanting Rumsfeld to resign. Last time I checked, the prime responsibility of the secretary of defense is to make sure that the U.S. military wins wars.

How our military treats enemy prisoners, although worth considering, ranks far, far lower on that totem pole. And rightly so.