From time to time I've written about Pat Dollard, the former Hollywood agent turned outspoken Iraqi War documentary filmmaker and IED magnet. He has a new site design up, and it is quite improved over his old site. Check it out.

While you're there, make sure you drink in the Youtube video he found, where a Iraqi cleric thanks America for invading Iraq and daring to try to fix an Arab culture that has been broken for 1,400 years (his words). He compares the existing Arab culture to slavery repeatedly, and says that our attempt to give Iraq a democracy is the best thing that has ever happened in the region.

Don't look for CNN, ABC, CBS, or AP to share this video.

Pat was recently on Greg Gutfeld's new show on Fox News called Red-Eye. An excerpt of the interview was on Hot Air over the weekend, talking about media coverage of the war and the "bravery" of George Clooney.

The full 14 minute, 4 second segment was on Google Video, but doesn't presently appear to be working. Hopefully it will be up and running later today.

Pat's war documentary Young Americans will hopefully soon be released as a series soon, once he landsa distributor. He tells me hes just watched the two-hour pilot episode and knows what edits he would like to make, and should hopefully have it complete soon.

If you want a taste, he has five video clips posted here.

CONTENT WARNING: The Marines in this video drop F-bombs like they were trying out to be John Edwards campaign bloggers, and his choice of music is hardcore punk liberally sprinkled with the same kind of language. As you might also expect, some combat footage is also not for the sqeamish. You might want to save this until you get home, and the kids are off to bed. If you want one words to describe the footage Dollard collected in Iraq, "raw" describes it best.

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According to a source in Baghdad, the dozens of checkpoints manned by Madhi Army militamen in the Shia areas are now missing in western Baghdad as of Monday, and the militamen themselves are absent from public view. The western media should be able to confirm this fairly soon.

In the meantime, the U.S. has locked down the Rusafa district in preparation of sweeps in eastern Baghdad. These operations have been confirmed as part of the much-discussed surge:

American commanders described the operation Sunday in the Rusafa district as an early taste of large-scale sweeps expected in eastern Baghdad to take back some measure of control from militias. Troops from the 3rd Stryker Brigade Combat Team were fired on by insurgents with automatic rifles, and they detained 10 Iraqis while searching for a car-bomb manufacturing site in the area, a violent sectarian fault line between a Shiite enclave and the insurgent-ridden Sunni neighborhood of Fadhil.

The operations in eastern Baghdad are to be a centerpiece of the so-called surge of 21,000 troops that many here view as a last-ditch effort to save the country from all-out civil war.

Eastern Baghdad "is a focal point for us right now," said Brigadier General John Campbell, deputy commander of coalition troops in Baghdad. American- led forces say they have conducted 3,400 patrols and detained 140 suspects in the past week.

Not surprisingly, Jon Kerry has attacked the surge, even though it has already commenced and American forces are already in combat.

Shocking, I know.

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Jules Crittenden has a post up this morning called Hardball, Anyone?, in which he posits that the Iranian diplomat kidnapped in Baghdad may be an example of the U.S playing hardball by snatching a "diplomat" that is actually an Iranian intelligence agent fomenting sectarian violence.

Plausible? Certainly, and an interesting theory. The Iranians, of course, are alleging exactly that. But quite frankly it doesn't sound like our modus operandi.

We've captured Iranian operatives before--we're currently holding five right now--and our soldiers were in U.S. uniforms when they made their raids on a fixed location.

This diplomat--and I doubt very much he was a diplomat--was snatched from his car in a very crude ambush, where tow cars blocked his path, engaged his guards in a brief firefight, snatched him, and sped away. Four suspects in one car were captured by Iraqi police, only to be apparently set free by Iraqi government officials the next day.

Could this be a simple kidnapping? That government officials allegedly ordered the release of four of the suspects suggests that it was not. This looks like an Iraqi operation, or at least an operation executed by Iraqis.

The question seems to be whether or not this an unsanctioned action by a rogue element of the Iraqi government, a directed clandestine action by the Iraqi government, or if this was an Iraqi operation on behalf of the United States. Quite frankly, we don't know, but the last seems the least plausible. When we want to arrest Iranian "diplomats," we simply do it, out in the open, as we did with the five already in custody. Why risk someone else screwing it up?

I suspect this is an Iraqi operation, one designed to send a message about Iran's meddling in Iraqi affairs. The only question in my mind is whether this operation was cleared from Nori- al-Maliki's office, or whether this action was autonomously conducted by other elements of the Iraqi government.

Either way, I'm sure the message sent to Tehran was received loud and clear. It only remains to be seen if the diplomat ever turns back up, and what the Iranian response may be.

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Live from Baghdad, the surge is officially on... depending on who you are listening to.

"Official" or not, American and Iraqi soldiers began operating yesterday, and are conducting raids tonight. To date, we have elements of the Iraqi Army 1st, 3rd, 5th, 7th and 9th Divisions operating in the Baghdad battlespace with Interior Ministry commandos and various American units, including a Brigade Combat Team of the 82nd Airborne and elements the U.S 2nd Division.

Allah's updating like crazy. Stay tuned...

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It has apparently. begun, and the rash of terrorist attacks over the past week, including the suicide truck bombing Saturday of a Baghdad marketplace frequented by both Sunni and Shia makes it appear, at least on the surface, that the terrorists were either attempting to get their last licks in before the expected crackdown before melting away, or the were planning to stay and fight. Of course, with different groups making different decisions (some reports indicate the Shia militias may go dormant; past experience tends to show that diehard al Qaeda elements prefer to seek their martyrdom), the attacks may have no more "meaning" than they typically do.

CNN reports on what appears to be the start of the much-debated "surge."

U.S. and Iraqi forces on Monday were preparing to launch a major security crackdown in Baghdad to curb sectarian bloodshed as a wave of bombings pushed the country's death toll to more than 1,000 in seven days.

Even as the security plan was being finalized, fresh violence continued to escalate the carnage with fresh explosions across the Iraq capital claiming more lives.

The city was still reeling from a massive suicide truck bomb on Saturday that detonated in a bustling market place, killing nearly 130 people in one of the worst attacks in the city since the U.S.-led invasion of 2003.

The United Nations says almost 17,000 people have died from fighting in the last year in Baghdad.

There was no official timeline for the launch of the new security plan, but U.S. Colonel Douglass Heckman, the senior adviser to the 9th Iraqi Army Division, said it was expected to begin shortly after a transition of military control in the city.

"Officially the Baghdad Operational Command takes over tomorrow, so the expectation is that the plan will be implemented soon thereafter, very soon thereafter," he said, according to The Associated Press.

Two Iraqi newspapers have reported the operation, the third attempt since May 2006 to pacify the capital, would begin Monday.

Heckman said thousands of U.S. and Iraqi reinforcements already were in place for the neighborhood-by-neighborhood sweep to clamp off the violence by Sunni insurgents and Shiite militia, AP said.

Greyhawk has a round-up at Mudville Gazette that suggests the surge is starting today, and that a Brigade Combat Team of the 82nd Airborne is already deployed in Baghdad as part of the first wave of the surge.

Back in the States, our feckless Senators, led by the craven John Warner, (R-Va.), and Carl Levin, (D-Mich.), are now set to attempt to debate their gutless non-binding opposition to the surge. This is especially disgusting when you take into account that these senators already know (or should know) that U.S. and Iraqi units are already engaging.

What moral cowardice it takes to debate a "non-binding resolution" which has no responsibility associated with it. What moral turpitude to attempt to undercut a battle already being joined.

I don't expect much from our Senators, but I do expect them to have enough courage to either issue forth law, or shut up. A non-binding resolution is the mark of a political coward; it means nothing, stands for nothing, and merely serves to provide them "wiggle-room" in either direction depending on the outcome of the battle.

Michael Yon, currently in Iraq spoke about the surge on yesterday's The Glenn and Helen Show. He said it will be like "unlike anything we've seen before."

Watch, and we will see. At this point, with so much of the public against the war, the future of our involvement in Iraq depends on the outcome.

Update: I just confirmation from a source in Baghdad. The "surge" started today, and is underway.

Update: I just called MNSTC-I PAO LTC Kevin Buckingham to get official word on the surge, and "the offical word" is that Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki will release the official word of when the surge starts.

We do know that Iraqi forces already establishing checkpoints throughout five districts, and we know it was Iraqi soldiers (with U.S. forces in support) that killed Khadhim al-Hamadani, a top al-Sadr official in the Medhi Army, in a raid last night.

Readers should keep in mind that the official, announced start and end dates of military operations are not always the same as the actual start and end dates.

According to al Sabaah, battalions of the Iraqi 3rd, 5th and 7th Divisions, along with Interior Minsitry commando units, are currently being deployed.

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Michael Yon offers a powerful account of the last act of a selfless Iraqi civilian in his latest dispatch, The Hands of God.

This is the kind of story you will not likely hear uttered by the New York Times or the Associated Press.

This is the caliber of the people that liberals would abandon to terror.

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If there was ever a good time to consider purging elements of the Iraqi government that many see as being "in bed" with al-Sadr's militia and Iran, this might qualify (via Greg Tinti).

Two senior Iraqi generals are being questioned in connection with last week's attack in Karbala that left five U.S. soldiers dead, Pentagon officials told FOX News Thursday.

Military officials also said the level of sophistication of the attack — where militants posed as U.S. soldiers to pass a number of security checkpoints — suggested possible Iranian involvement.

The assault was carried out by nine to 12 militants wearing new U.S. military fatigues and traveling in black GMC Suburban vehicles — the type used by U.S. government convoys. U.S. officials said the imposters had American weapons and spoke English.

The raid, as explained by Iraqi and American officials, began after nightfall at about 6 p.m. on Jan. 20, while American military officers were meeting with their Iraqi counterparts on the main floor of the Provisional Joint Coordination Center (PJCC) in Karbala.

The Pentagon said the investigation into the attack is ongoing and several Iraqis have been detained for questioning.

Because high-level generals were possibly involved, the Pentagon said, it raises questions about the loyalty and trustworthiness of Iraqi military officers at the highest levels.

For the sake of argument, let's consider the possibilty that the Karbala attack did involve the Qods Force branch of the Iranian Republican Guard Corps as some have suggested, and that these two Iraqi generals are in fact in some way complicit in this attack.

If this is indeed the case, then this would seem to be a case of treason by these two generals. A great deal of interest will be paid in seeing how Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki deals with this situation, and if he is judged to mishandle it, it could be very detrimental to his government. Many already feel that al-Maliki is far too cozy with the Madhi militia of Muqtada al-Sadr, and are critical of his apparent disinterest in Iran's involvement within Iraq.

Should al-Maliki fail here, his government stands to lose trust already wearing thin.

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