Iraq's Untold Story: The Internal Discussion

Iraq's Untold Story is primarily about the good news that doesn't get reported, and the following Iraq the Model link definitely has that, as well as some offsetting concern about whether Samarra will respond to events in a positive way. But what really interests me is the dialogue, another feature of Iraq that I want to see more prominent in MSM. In a post titled Samarra Learning from Telafar, Omar:

Yesterday, the minister of defense met delegates from Samarra in his office. The visit arranged for by the head of the Sunni mortmain department sheikh Ahmed Al-Samarrai came after the minister declared that that the government is going to send troops to other cities including Samarra.

The minister was straightforward in his speech and warned the delegates that if the city doesn't cooperate with the authorities in eliminating terror and criminal gangs, troops will have to enter the city and clean it up in a way similar to what happened in Talafar...

The delegates said they're going to use this chance to protect their city from military operations but there was also a tone of denial in their words; denial to the fact that Samarra hosts terror cells and they tried to show the case look like a conspiracy on their city by "outsiders" yet they didn't say who those outsiders were or where they come from.

However, the minister embarrassed them when he said:

American troops handed security tasks over to Iraqi forces in Najaf and they'll be soon doing the same in other southern cities. Why do you think is that?

Without waiting for an answer, he continued:

I tell you why. Those cities are much more stable when compared with cities in the west or north west like Samarra and the young people in the south are joining the security forces in growing numbers, so why don't you and your people do the same? I hereby announce that our doors are open for recruits from Samarra, encourage your young men to join the army to keep your city safe and peaceful.

The government is willing to hear your demands and discuss them to reach a solution for the situation in Samarra, so talk to your people, write down your demands and submit them to the government but keep them reasonable, we can't negotiate demands like those we heard from Ramadi, they wanted us to pull all Iraqi and American troops and let them rebuild units from the old army and that's not acceptable. There's one army in Iraq.

An Army of One. Has a nice ring to it.