Tuesday, August 21, 2007

Iraq notes

While Hilary Clinton says:

"I do not think the Iraqis are ready to do what they have to do for themselves yet," she said. "I think it is unacceptable for our troops to be caught in the crossfire of a sectarian civil war while the Iraqi government is on vacation."

Clinton said new tactics have brought some success against insurgents, particularly in Iraq's Anbar province.

"It's working. We're just years too late in changing our tactics," she said. "We can't ever let that happen again. We can't be fighting the last war. We have to keep preparing to fight the new war."
Michael Totten explains how to spy in Iraq, and in passing shows the hostility of the locals to American invaders:
“We support you,” the man continued. “You support our back, we support your back. But you must understand: If you pull back, we will pull back. I will have no choice but to pull back if I can’t depend on you. It will be much harder for us to stand together. But as long as you stand firmly behind us we will support you against Moqtada al Sadr and the other bastards in the area.”
[...]
I tore off a hunk of barbecued chicken and rolled it into some bread. The spices tasted vaguely of lime.

“This is delicious,” I said. And it was.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

"We can't be fighting the last war. We have to keep preparing to fight the new war."

If thinks that's an exciting new insight, she's even more hopelessly out of her depth than I'd feared.

Nobody has ever known what the next war was going to goddamn be, much less what it was going to turn into after it got underway and the other guys saw what we were doing. This fact has been conventional wisdom for a long time.

These people aren't even adults.