If you’re a senator with reservations about our policy in Iraq, maybe you should listen more to James Inhofe (R-Okla.). Inhofe has traveled to Iraq to observe the situation firsthand, and he wishes that his colleagues would disregard negative press coverage and pay more attention to some of the good news from the region. Therefore, in the interests of fairness, the Washington Monthly has compiled all of Senator Inhofe’s reporting as shared, repeatedly, with his colleagues on the Senate Armed Services Committee. Now we, too, can perhaps see the other side of the story:

I’ve been there quite a few times, twice in the last three months. And you know, you go over like in the Sunni triangle, the experience over there with General Madhi, who used to—all of you know him—he used to be the brigade commander for Saddam Hussein in Fallujah. He hated Americans, and he’s been training, embedded training, with our Marines. And he looked at us and said, when the Marines had to rotate and go out, he actually cried. Here is a general that just hated Americans under Saddam Hussein, and he has actually renamed his Iraqi security forces the “Fallujah Marines.”
— JAMES INHOFE, HEARING OF THE SENATE ARMED
SERVICES COMMITTEE, June 23, 2005

And as I go over there, and I’ve been over there many times, the first thing that is said to me by the troops—these are Marines and Army—is, “Why is it that they don’t like us?”—and they’re talking about the media—“Why is it that people back home don’t have a clear picture of our successes?” If we could just have the picture of these guys in Fallujah—General Madhi, who was actually a brigade commander for Saddam Hussein, who is now the brigade commander for the Iraqi security forces—he was so impressed with what the Marines were doing there that he changed the name to the “Fallujah Marines.” And here’s a guy who hated Americans before then. It’s all because of the embedded training with the Marines.
— JAMES INHOFE, HEARING OF THE SENATE ARMED
SERVICES COMMITTEE, June 30, 2005

If you rely on the media and the distorted way in which the media is reporting what’s going on there, you’re not going to get a very good idea of what’s really going on. I can remember so well spending one whole trip in the Sunni triangle, in Fallujah, just talked to the troops there ... And the former brigade commander that hated Americans—he was a brigade commander for Saddam Hussein—now, after having experienced embedded training with our Marines over there, has totally changed his mind. He loves them. He actually cried when the rotation came. I mean, these things are actually happening over there. He renamed the Fallujah security forces the “Fallujah Marines.”
— JAMES INHOFE, HEARING OF THE SENATE ARMED
SERVICES COMMITTEE, September 29, 2005

I would just mention a couple of little anecdotal things and maybe ask you how we can get this out so that people can know what’s going on. One would be in Fallujah, where we had a former brigade commander for Saddam Hussein who had hated Americans until he started training his Iraqi security forces with our Marines. Now, as a result of that, he learned to love the Marines and love the American people and the freedoms that we’re bringing to that country. And right in the center of Fallujah, he told me that when they rotated the Marines out, he said, “We got together”— they’d been involved in embedded training—said, “We actually cried together” at the time they left. Now, that story’s—nobody ever hears things like that.
— JAMES INHOFE, HEARING OF THE SENATE ARMED
SERVICES COMMITTEE, October 25, 2005

You mentioned this morning, General Schoomaker, that the eastern half of Baghdad is now secured by the Iraqis, not by the Americans. What you didn’t mention is that the general in charge of that is General Madhi, who was ... the brigade commander in Fallujah for Saddam Hussein who hated Americans. And I was over there when the—they started the embedded training with Marines, and he learned to love the Americans so much that he told me that when they rotated the Marines out, he cried. In fact, he renamed the Fallujah Iraqi security forces the “Fallujah Marines” ... So I think these great success stories like that just go—they seem to go unnoticed.
— JAMES INHOFE, HEARING OF THE SENATE ARMED
SERVICES COMMITTEE, February 7, 2006

When you hear people who have not been there and depend on press reports, there’s no way that they can get the resolve that our troops have. There’s no way—I will share with you, General Pace, since this is up in the Marines’ area in Fallujah, an experience up there with this Dr. Madhi that you’ve met many times, I’m sure. Dr. Madhi—or General Madhi—was actually the brigade commander for Saddam Hussein. He hated Americans until he started embedded training with Marines, and he learned to love them so much that he said that when they rotated them out, that they cried. And he then renamed the Iraqi security forces at Fallujah the “Fallujah Marines.” Things like that that are going on that you can only get by being there and experiencing it.
— JAMES INHOFE, HEARING OF THE SENATE ARMED
SERVICES COMMITTEE, August 3, 2006

Now, a minute ago we were talking about Fallujah. I have had occasion to be there three or four times and during all the elections, I might add. When General Mahdi was in charge there—a guy, a general who really didn’t like Americans to start with until we started—they started their embedded training with Marines. And you can remember the story that he said, when they rotated them out, they all got together and cried. You know, they became very close. They thought that was a very successful program. Now, that’s kind of a model, in my mind, of embedded training. — JAMES INHOFE, HEARING OF THE SENATE ARMED
SERVICES COMMITTEE, November 15, 2006

I was pleased to hear that the president will increase by 4,000 the number of Marines in the al-Anbar province. I have visited Fallujah in the al-Anbar province and witnessed the success of U.S. Marines embedded with Iraqi units. Fallujah has long been the model for embedding troops, and they will now apply that model to the rest of Iraq.
— JAMES INHOFE, RESPONSE TO PRESIDENT’S ADDRESS TO NATION, January 10, 2007