The Advisor 26 August, 2006

Download the_advisor_26_august_2006.pdf

Someone should proof read these.

Pat Lang

Comments

[parvati_roma]

Couldn't help noticing how the faces of all Iraqis photographed - whether police, military or contractors, are either turned away or carefully airbrushed to make them unrecognisable - probably to safeguard their families?

[confusedponderer]

Gen. Odom IMO had a good comment at hand on the subject:

"The problem in Iraq is not military competency; it is political consolidation. Iraq has a large officer corps with plenty of combat experience from the Iran-Iraq war. Moktada al-Sadr’s Shiite militia fights well today without U.S. advisors, as do Kurdish pesh merga units. The problem is loyalty. To whom can officers and troops afford to give their loyalty? The political camps in Iraq are still shifting. So every Iraqi soldier and officer today risks choosing the wrong side. As a result, most choose to retain as much latitude as possible to switch allegiances. All the U.S. military trainers in the world cannot remove that reality. But political consolidation will. It should by now be clear that political power can only be established via Iraqi guns and civil war, not through elections or U.S. colonialism by ventriloquism."

http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/odom/odom.html

[Propagandist]

The Advisor could use a new editor. The headline clearly reads "Violence decreasing in Iraq" while the first sentence of the article makes clear that what is being reported is the decrease of violence in Baghdad since the addition of many thousand additional soldiers and police. I think nation-wide statistics will show that the headline is misleading at best, false at worse.

I also find the continual need to blackout/airbrush everyone's face troubling in light of how much "progress" is being achieved (or claimed to that effect).

[leonard unger]

I was thinking that maybe Israel will come out on top in Lebanon after all IF UN Resolution 1701 is implemented in the sense of Hezbolla not so much being disarmed but unable to attack Israel by commando raids or rocket attacks. Yes Israel got a bloody nose this summer yes Olmert is not doing well in the polls but Israels policy of half way destroying Lebanon might
prevent a recourance of future conflict with Hezbolla. Did anybody notice the pictures of Lebanese troops carrying unloaded rifles into Southern Lebanese villages? Anyway what do you guys and gals think?

Leonard Unger