Before the President gives yet another political speech about Iraq, read what Thomas Ricks wrote in the Washington Post about General McCaffrey's newest report:
An influential retired Army general released a dire assessment of the situation in Iraq, based on a recent round of meetings there with Gen. David H. Petraeus and 16 other senior U.S. commanders.And, this:
"The population is in despair," retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey wrote in an eight-page document compiled in his capacity as a professor at West Point. "Life in many of the urban areas is now desperate."
Nevertheless, [McCaffrey's] bottom line is that the U.S. military is in "strategic peril" -- a sharp contrast to his previous views.And despite John McCain's happy talk about how safe Iraq is, McCaffrey offers another assessment:
The government lacks dominance in every province, he added. One result is that "no Iraqi government official, coalition soldier, diplomat, reporter, foreign NGO [nongovernmental organization], nor contractor can walk the streets of Baghdad, nor Mosul, nor Kirkuk, nor Basra, nor Tikrit, nor Najaf, nor Ramadi, without heavily armed protection."Bush and McCain make a great team spinning Iraq. They share ownership of the war.
Militias and armed bands are "in some ways more capable of independent operations" than the Iraqi army, he added.
