Mike Yon, The Modern Day Ernie Pyle; updated

I have been devouring Mike Yon's dispatches since I chanced on his "Gates of Fire" post a couple years ago, he really deserves a Pulitzer Prize for independant journalism. His latest,"The Final Option", is typical of his style of being the fly on the wall while putting himself at enormous risk of being swatted in order to get out the truth, good, bad and ugly, this one is on some amazing progress being made on the ground and in the hearts and minds of the people of the Al-Anbar and the city of Hit. This is one of his best as it details the pacification of an overly zealous and powerful police chief that had crossed the line with the people and they requested our help to solve the problem. We did without a shot or a bruise to anybody. We are winning this war in a big way if only our MSM had the guts to cover it fairly. We get headlines that read"Ten Killed in Suicide-bomb Attack" instead of "30 Al Qaeda killed and 60 captured" , numbers are retorical but close.
There is so much information at Bill Roggio's Fourth Rail you can get lost in the high grass, especially if you explore his highlites and sidebars where I found this great piece from The Telegraph in the UK, by David Blair, good reporting with a lefty twinge, it is worth the read.

Update: Barnyard friend Amy from Bottom Line Upfront has some great posts up, check them out.