Word: shiing
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...seems clear the President has won this round. An optimistic general will trump a skeptical politician anytime. Even when Petraeus gave sketchy, disingenuous answers-expressing hope about the three-way Shi'ite gang war in the oil-rich port city of Basra-not even the most knowledgeable Senators had the facts to dispute him. The general was armed with the modern military's deadliest weapon, the PowerPoint-presentation-serried ranks of bar charts marching toward victory, which provided camouflage for the gaping holes and contradictions in the Petraeus-Crocker story. Crocker, for example, seemed particularly insistent on roping Iran into...
...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...
...Laden as a bad Muslim. Islamic canon is formal: a Muslim leader must do everything he can within his power to prevent fitna - civil war between Muslims. And that is exactly what bin Laden has done in Iraq, drawing us into a war and creating the circumstances for Shi'a and Sunni to kill each other. Whether or not al-Qaeda is responsible for every market truck bomb in Iraq, it will be laid at bin Laden's feet...
...That's because there are unmistakable risks to the new Sunni alliance. Arming the Sunnis against al-Qaeda is fine, but if they tire of their alliance with Washington, they become just another faction armed with U.S. weapons. Shi'ites and Kurds worry that the Sunni tribesmen who are fighting alongside American troops now have little or no loyalty to the Iraqi government and would just as soon turn their guns on Iraqi forces as on al-Qaeda. In addition, strengthening a Sunni stronghold in the middle of the country goes a ways toward cementing the very partitioning of Iraq...
...Baghdad to Kuwait or Kurdistan. Others have called for the military to concentrate on training the Iraqi army - a project that has already cost the U.S. billions, to little effect. American soldiers complain that their nominal allies in the Iraqi police and army are more loyal to Shi'ite militias than to the national government. An American intelligence officer in a western Baghdad suburb reports that the Iraqi police there are so thoroughly infiltrated by insurgents that the entire force is useless. Bush has recently returned to the mantra that as the Iraqis stand up, the U.S. will stand down...