Return To Ramadi

This is a very long piece, but well worth reading. Fumento writes in the style of Michael Yon and with the same immediacy and credibility. This is stuff the MSM won't tell you because its encouraging and shows that we are indeed making significant progress in the hardest of the hardcore areas in Iraq.

Michael Fumento

[...]despite desperate efforts by the anti-Iraqi forces to keep citizens of Ramadi from providing valuable tips – efforts including murder, torture, and destroying phone lines and cell phone towers – the enemy is indeed wearing out its welcome in a city it once essentially owned[...]

[...]Put it all together – the Forward Observation Bases, new Combat Operation Posts, new Observation Posts, tribal cooperation, ever more Iraqi army and police, better intelligence, and public works projects. There's no "stay the course" strategy here; the course changes as necessary and it's continually changed for the better. I believe we are winning the Battle of Ramadi. And if the enemy can be beaten here, he can be beaten anywhere.

H/T to commenter 'E. T. Page' over at the Mudville Gazette