Word: iraqi
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...which provided camouflage for the gaping holes and contradictions in the Petraeus-Crocker story. Crocker, for example, seemed particularly insistent on roping Iran into the scenario. "The Iranian President has already announced that Iran will fill any vacuum in Iraq," the ambassador testified. But Crocker also testified that the Iraqi Shi'ites were Arabs who had fought fiercely against the Iranians in the eight-year war and were very unlikely to cede control to their Persian neighbor without a fight. Petraeus described al-Qaeda in Iraq both as the greatest threat to stability and as the greatest loser...
...Crocker festivities on Capitol Hill this week. She was reminiscing, as most of her colleagues did, about time spent on the ground in Iraq with General David Petraeus, but it was not a recent visit. It was back in 2005, when Petraeus was in charge of training the new Iraqi army. An aide pulled out a blown-up photograph of the Senator and the general. "You were so upbeat, General," Boxer said. "You said, 'You're about to see some terrific troops.'" There were 100,000 of them "ready to go ... You were as optimistic as anyone I've seen...
...unasked question was so profound that Petraeus, a proud man, chose to answer it anyway. "I believe that my optimism back when I showed those very fine Iraqi forces to Senator Boxer was justified," he said. The good work was undone, though, in 2006, when Shi'ite militias "hijacked" whole units of the Iraqi military. But, he insisted, we are back on the right track now. Petraeus may well be right-or maybe not. The nature of military leadership is congenital optimism; officers are trained to complete the mission, to refuse to countenance the possibility of failure. That focus...
...That's not nearly enough, of course. There was an important follow-up that Boxer didn't ask either: Without a strong, credible central government, for whom exactly is the re-retrained Iraqi army fighting? How can any Iraqi be loyal to a government that doesn't exist? And, finally, now that the Sunnis have decisively rejected the extremists, why should any American trooper sacrifice even a pinkie in this sectarian catastrophe...
Bush's denials to the contrary, the Administration is holding its breath hoping Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki will resign. It only now has figured out that Maliki is too close to Iran. And if Maliki turns out to be obstinate, the Arabic word for coup d'etat is "inqilab...