Iraq has changed
I have a report on some of what I saw in Iraq over at Pajamas Media.
Whatever your views of the War in Iraq, if they are based on information more than six months old they are probably outdated.
Read the whole thing here.
RELATED:
Jules Crittenden notes one of the reasons you might have an out of date perspective on the situation in Iraq:
. . . U.S. military officials say they “embedded” journalists 219 times in September 2007. Last month, the number shrank to 39.
Good news is not news.
October 14th, 2008 at 1:58 pm
So how long will we be paying off the Sunni insurgents?
This lefty professor gets on my last nerve, but he makes a few points worth consideration.
Anyway, I’m glad you’re back, Bob.
Ed: Thanks. Actually, we stopped paying former Sunni insurgents on September 30 of this year. That was a major hurdle to get the Shia government to incorporate the Sunni Awakening members into the national security force structure. So far it’s working.
And your lefty professor is flat wrong about Iran. The largest remaining problems in Iraq are because of Iran. Many would have you believe–many even in the military, although in the last few months they’ve come around to accepting the evidence–that Iran supports only Shia extremist groups in Iraq. While Iran has long supported Jaish al Mahdi and other Shia extremists, they’ve now also come to the aid with weapons, training, and funding of Sunni extremist groups including AQI.
Your professor’s views prove my point. If your view of what is happening in Iraq was formed 12 or even 18 months ago, it’s probably out-of-date, even wrong. His views on Iraq today were formed during a trip to a neighboring country, that was under the rule of a previous regime more than three decades ago! Iran doesn’t want us to succeed Iraq so that we leave in victory thus allowing Shia extremists can take over Iraq. Iran wants us in Iraq, tied down by failures until we leave in defeat, knowing that we’re not going to come back to the region and interfere with whatever it is that they want to do. They’re not banking on Desert Storm, their plan is Vietnam. After DS we’ve been in the region continuously since. A successful conclusion in Iraq keeps us in the region at some level, for years. (Before you balk about that, we’re still in Britain, Germany, Italy, Japan, and Korea–and thankfully so.) After VN we didn’t go back even to save our most loyal allies and thousands of Amerasians we abandoned to the North Vietnamese.
Your professor is so wrong on so many levels that it would be laughable were it not so sad.