It's been my privilege to have supported former Green Beret and self-embedded reporter MICHAEL YON for the past three years, as he has consistently produced the most impassioned, vivid, and informed reporting from the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan.
Like all his enrolled supporters, I've received regular email notice of his latest dispatches, with links to his website for the full texts, always signed "Very respectfully," for he has always respected the relationship built with his readers, and fulfilled his end of the bargain by offering them the raw truth, positive or not.
Today Yon's email headline reads more bluntly than the linked text on the website, but the message is the same. Today he feels confident enough to tell his correspondents this:
"We have won the war in Iraq."
No one who uttered those words, short of General Petraeus himself, could be more readily believed than Michael Yon.
We are there.
Our soldiers, Marines, sailors, and airmen have bled [Sgt. Major Prosser, Deuce Four, at right], but the prize has been victory.
The road ahead is not without pitfalls, but the conclusion -- the real "mission accomplished" moment, is in sight.
On the other hand, Yon is equally blunt in saying that the war in Afghanistan -- never really over, despite reports to the contrary -- is indeed being lost. But it is not unwinnable, if the same determination put forward in the Iraq surge strategy is applied there without delay.
If there is one massive IED embedded in both roads ahead, it would be the election of Barack Obama as president. (That's me speaking, not Yon, who declines to comment on such matters.)
Stay tuned.
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