As to the US political/military strategy in Iraq, leftists, liberals and progressives have long since concluded that the Iraqi resistance fights American troops using Fourth Generation or Asymmetric warfare. This should not have been a surprise as the State Department did a yearlong study from April 2002 until the fall of Baghdad that anticipated precisely such an insurgency. Considering that Iraq had gone through just such an insurgency in the years following World War I and that Algeria had driven out the French in the 1950s after a similarly long struggle, an extended insurgency was quite predictable and indeed, predicted by the Future of Iraq Project. A Report (PDF) from the Pentagon's Defense Science Board agrees that the insurgency is home-grown and that it proceeds from very real grievances and disagreements with US policy.
Unfortunately, the Bush Administration appears to believe that the Iraqi resistance is a foreign entity or a group with a classic triangular chain of command that's tightly organized along traditional lines. This theory has come under considerable skepticism a great many times over the past two years, but somehow continues to fascinate our Secretary of Defense and presumably, most of our military chain of command.
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Note: I've posted these two paragraphs on my photo-essay on the March 19th demonstration in New York. Check out especially the third picture here for a look at just why liberals are so skeptical about the even-handedness of the press.
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