Americans behind our Soldiers, Iraqis Prefer Life Today, Iraqis Against al Qaeda

This weekend there was a protest march on the Pentagon. What is important, to me at least, is that there was a counter-protest called, the Gathering of Eagles. Since I wasn’t there, I can’t comment first hand on the scene. But there were plenty of bloggers who were there, so I’m linking to Michell Malkin’s post on this, http://michellemalkin.com/archives/007109.htm, so hop on over there for updates.

http://www.gatheringofeagles.org/

the first unofficial estimate of the Eagle turn-out today…

30,000!

That figure may be adjusted upward as more figure are tallied during the week. Fox News reported today that the anti-war protesters had significantly less than they expected. However, they are erroneously reporting that the Eagles were there in “equal numbers”. The truth is that we outnumbered them by at least three to one!

Consider…ANSWER had a year to plan their well-publicized event and were hoping for around 100,000. They actually drew about 5,000-10,000, according to various news reports today. The Gathering of Eagles, on the other hand, had about six weeks to plan an unprecedented response – and with no advertising, no publicity, no celebrity or political endorsement, no news coverage, and no big money, we had about 30,000 boots on the ground!

**************

And this gent, found some interesting opinion polls from within Iraq:

http://blogs.dailymail.com/donsurber/2007/03/18/iraqis-ask-civil-war-what-civil-war/

Lifting from Marie Colvin’s report in the Sunday Times of London:
” 49% of those questioned preferred life under Nouri al-Maliki, the prime minister, to living under Saddam. Only 26% said things had been better in Saddam’s era, while 16% said the two leaders were as bad as each other and the rest did not know or refused to answer.”

Well, so much for his popularity. Didn’t he get 100% of the vote in 2002?

But this was the big news:
” Another surprise was that only 27% believed they were caught up in a civil war. Again, that number divided along religious lines, with 41% of Sunnis believing Iraq was in a civil war, compared with only 15% of Shi’ites.”

Now, how could that be, when 76% of Americans believe there’s a civil war in Iraq???

Tigerhawk also has some comments on this topic.

**************

And this in from Iraq the Model…

http://iraqthemodel.blogspot.com/2007/03/one-thing-al-qaeda-excels-at-making-new.html

Al-Qaeda’s terrorists-whom AP insists on calling insurgents-expended three suicide bombers and precious resources against their supposedly sympathetic civilian Sunni hosts instead of American and Iraqi soldiers and Shia civilians; their usual enemies.
If this indicates anything it indicates that al-Qaeda’s is reprioritizing the targets on the hit list. The reason: al-Qaeda is sensing a serious threat in the change of attitude of the tribes toward them and perhaps the apparently successful meeting of the sheiks with Maliki and the agreements that were made then was the point at which open war had to be declared.

The tribes in Anbar are stubborn and they have many ruthless warriors. That’s a proven fact and it looks like Al-Qaeda had just made their gravest mistake—their once best friends are just about to become their worst enemy.

Well, if al Qaeda is targeting Sunni’s, then the Sunni’s must be targeting al Qaeda. Which is a good thing for our troops on the ground.