It has begun, and Michael Yon writes about it, and the general state of the war, and the abysmal state of reporting about it:

Northeast of Baghdad, innocent civilians are being asked to leave Baquba. More than 1,000 AQI fighters are there, with perhaps another thousand adjuncts. Baquba alone might be as intense as Operation Phantom Fury in Fallujah in late 2004. They are ready for us. Giant bombs are buried in the roads. Snipers—real snipers—have chiseled holes in walls so that they can shoot not from roofs or windows, but from deep inside buildings, where we cannot see the flash or hear the shots. They will shoot for our faces and necks. Car bombs are already assembled. Suicide vests are prepared.

The enemy will try to herd us into their traps, and likely many of us will be killed before it ends. Already, they have been blowing up bridges, apparently to restrict our movements. Entire buildings are rigged with explosives. They have rockets, mortars, and bombs hidden in places they know we are likely to cross, or places we might seek cover. They will use human shields and force people to drive bombs at us. They will use cameras and make it look like we are ravaging the city and that they are defeating us. By the time you read this, we will be inside Baquba, and we will be killing them. No secrets are spilling here.

Our jets will drop bombs and we will use rockets. Helicopters will cover us, and medevac our wounded and killed. By the time you read this, our artillery will be firing, and our tanks moving in. And Humvees. And Strykers. And other vehicles. Our people will capture key terrain and cutoff escape routes. The idea this time is not to chase al Qaeda out, but to trap and kill them head-on, or in ambushes, or while they sleep. When they are wounded, they will be unable to go to hospitals without being captured, and so their wounds will fester and they will die painfully sometimes. It will be horrible for al Qaeda. Horror and terrorism is what they sow, and tonight they will reap their harvest. They will get no rest. They can only fight and die, or run and try to get away. Nobody is asking for surrender, but if they surrender, they will be taken.

It's long, but if you want to understand what is really going on in Iraq, read the whole thing.

[Update late morning]

Bill Roggio has more.

Tell our guys to check their fire. Remember, Al-Qaeda are the ones wearing BLACK hats.

Yeah, look carefuly for the BLACK hats. Meanwhile good old RNCer and ex-governor Jim Gilmore wants us us to stop with the BLACK hats already.

Moron wrote: Al-Qaeda are the ones wearing BLACK hats.

President Bush's nominee to be war czar said yesterday that conditions in Iraq have not improved significantly despite the influx of U.S. troops in recent months and predicted that, absent major political reform, violence will continue to rage over the next year.

Lt. Gen. Douglas E. Lute, tapped by Bush to serve as a new high-powered White House coordinator of the war, told senators at a confirmation hearing that Iraqi factions "have shown so far very little progress" toward the reconciliation necessary to stem the bloodshed. If that does not change, he said, "we're not likely to see much difference in the security situation" a year from now.

Lute's dour assessment mirrored the views of U.S. intelligence officials, who told the Senate Armed Services Committee in a closed session last month that trends in Iraq remain negative and that the prospect for political movement by the nation's feuding Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds appears marginal. The secret intelligence conclusions were disclosed during yesterday's hearing by Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.) and confirmed by a Republican official.

The conclusions largely tracked the findings of the last National Intelligence Estimate, released in January, before Bush announced his decision to send nearly 30,000 more troops to Iraq, suggesting that the intelligence community does not think the force buildup has changed the outlook nearly five months later. Bayh quoted a CIA expert on radical Islam as saying that "our presence in Iraq is creating more members of al-Qaeda than we are killing in Iraq," though it was unclear whether that came during the May 24 briefing.

From the linked piece:

Al Qaeda and associates had little or no presence in Iraq before the current war. But we made huge mistakes early on and are pumping blood and gold into the region to pay for those blunders. When we failed to secure the streets and to restore the stability needed to get Iraq on its feet, we sowed doubt and mistrust. When we disbanded the government and the army, and tolerated corruption and ineptitude in reconstruction, we created a vacuum and filled the ranks of an insurgency-hydra with mostly local talent. But when we flattened parts of Fallujah not once, but twice, primarily in response to the murders of four of our people, we helped create a spectacle of injustice and chaos, the very conditions in which Al Qaeda thrives.

The corollary to the assertion that General Petraeus nows how to win in Iraq is that for several years the Rumsfeld-ian, Wolfowitz, Feith-based, Cheney-ite and Bush led teams FUBAR-ed things in Iraq. Badly.

If you want support for the idea that General Petraeus should be given ample time then admit that the previous Defense Department leaders were the incompetent clowns who allowed Al Qaeda into Iraq in the first place.

More Michael Yon:

When we eviscerated Fallujah, Al Qaeda, who had not been here before, swarmed in and grew like a tumor. There were many insurgent groups already infecting Iraq with many conflicting ideologies and goals, and just as many opportunistic thugs, and some that only needed the band aids and aspirin of open markets and electricity and a feeling of normality. But Al Qaeda has been trying to start a civil war here for several years; chaos speeds the decay they feed on.

I do have confidence in General Petraeus but I have NONE is the knuckleheads above him inside the Beltway. Put Petraeus in charge and PURGE the Pentagon of all the Rumsefld-ian and Cheney-ite morons and I will advocate at Daily Kos that we need to be patient in Iraq.

And yes, the following is the right strategy, a necessary strategy:

The doctor has made a decision: Al Qaeda must be excised. That means a large scale attack, and what appears to be the most widespread combat operations since the end of the ground war are now unfolding. A small part of that larger battle will be the Battle for Baquba. For those involved, it will be a very large battle, but in context, it will be only one of numerous similar battles now unfolding. Just as this sentence was written, we began dropping bombs south of Baghdad and our troops are in contact.

al Qaeda must be excised, but it was our failures that allowed AQ to enter Iraq in the first place.

Anyway, as for strategy, this is what Israel should have done last summer in southern Lebanon. Riflemen and combat engineers, leveraged with the best high tech force multipliers our money can buy.

And if the Iraq war is to be won, it will be won by the American riflemen. By the infantry, as has always been the case throughout human history.

Anyway, back to the first Yon quote -- "When we failed to secure the streets and to restore the stability needed to get Iraq on its feet, we sowed doubt and mistrust. When we disbanded the government and the army, and tolerated corruption and ineptitude in reconstruction, we created a vacuum and filled the ranks of an insurgency-hydra with mostly local talent." -- to persuade the American people that Iraq requires more American time, blood and treasure we need to re-assure the American people that the incompetent clowns who FUBAR-ed Iraq in the first place have been removed from all positions of control and decision making.

Deal?

Oh, and Rand Simberg is exactly right, here:

It's long, but if you want to understand what is really going on in Iraq, read the whole thing.

The upcoming battle Michael Yon describes is needful. We MUST act as Yon prescribes because of OUR past failures;

Al Qaeda and associates had little or no presence in Iraq before the current war. But we made huge mistakes early on and are pumping blood and gold into the region to pay for those blunders. When we failed to secure the streets and to restore the stability needed to get Iraq on its feet, we sowed doubt and mistrust. When we disbanded the government and the army, and tolerated corruption and ineptitude in reconstruction, we created a vacuum and filled the ranks of an insurgency-hydra with mostly local talent. But when we flattened parts of Fallujah not once, but twice, primarily in response to the murders of four of our people, we helped create a spectacle of injustice and chaos, the very conditions in which Al Qaeda thrives.

Yup, this is how to "understand what is really going on in Iraq"

Kudos, Rand.

No Al Queda was not yet in Anbar in early 2003; but it had moved into Iraq by the end of 2002;
as they were consolidating their forces in Afghanistan in the early 90s. Some saay we should have cracked down more forcefully in the spring of 2003; would that have really bought us much good will. Would keeping the narrowly sectarian and tribal Army & security forces; have bought
us much peace. We made that bargain in Germany
with McCloy, Operation Paper Clip, the Gehlen Org;
in Japan with Kodama, Sasagawa, Kishi; and other
class A war criminals; founders of the LDP. (Interestingly the current prime minister, Abe
is a relative of the last official) The Tikriti mob that constituted Saddam's Government was conposed mainly from elements from Tikrit, Ramadi, Fallujah, and other Anbar/Dulaimi sanctuaries. Dulaimi tribesman were the ones who made Saddam's Republican Guard and Mukharabat; despite its' sectarian nature (400 mosques on first count) They did not provide security; their brought terror to the Shia and Kurds who are the majority. But the Dulaimi, Ubeidi and Jibbar tribesman have never acknow-ledged that fact; now after 3 years as they see the fruit of Salafi and Wahhabism; they have sought an alliance with coalition troops. Was there corruption, one does
not doubt it; but one can't rely on the former Baathists as a standard.

God speed to our guys. Both American and Iraqi.

First, pull out the weeds (from the Roggio link):

The fighting in Diyala will be hard. Al Qaeda is organized in small military units with infantry, mortars, anti-tank and anti-aircraft teams, as well as suicide and IED cells and the accompanying logistical nodes. Al Qaeda has been conducting a terror campaign to remove tribal leaders and others who oppose them, while waging a campaign of intimidation designed to cow the local population.

Okinawa may be a good precedent concerning the nature of this fight.

But then, AFTER the weeds are pulled, if we desire to keep al Qaeda from coming back we need to nation build and that will require spending more of our tax dollars building infrastructure and providing genuine hope of a better life for the remaining residents. Unless we grow good grass, pulling weeds shall be futile.

And no, Iraqi oil revenues will NOT be sufficient.

I'll join Mac; godspeed and god bless to the forces fighting for a better future and a modern democratic Iraq.

I haven't heard even a mention of it all on either BBC World News or CNN International Edition (it's been at least 24 hours) so I hope that means things are going pretty well so far.

As far as Michael Yon goes I wonder why some of the commenters here thinks that one has to buy his opinons or even his reporting wholesale? Perhaps doing so is a habit of theirs? I for one don't do that with anybody's opinons no matter who they are but that doesn't preclude me from deeply appreciating his actual boots on the ground reporting.