Washington Post: President’s Iraq Success Story a ‘Tall’ Tale
The paper throws cold water on Bush's much-touted claim that the Tall Afar region of Iraq is a case study in the U.S.' ability to help restore stability to a war-torn area. (Check out the transcript of Bush's speech--particularly the unscripted Q & A session at the end.)
Truthdig says
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The Washington Post throws cold water on Bush’s much-touted claim that the Tall Afar region of Iraq is a case study in the U.S.’ ability to help restore stability to a war-torn area.
(Check out the transcript of Bush’s speech–particularly the unscripted Q & A session at the end.)
Washington Post
:
CLEVELAND, March 20 — As President Bush tells the tale, the battle for Tall Afar offers a case study in how U.S. and Iraqi forces working together can root out insurgents and restore stability. “The example of Tall Afar,” he told an audience here Monday, “gives me confidence in our strategy.”
Reports from the streets of Tall Afar, half a world away, offer a more complex story. U.S. forces last fall did drive out radicals who had brutalized the mid-size city near the Syrian border. But lately, residents say, the city has taken another dark turn. “The armed men are fewer,” Nassir Sebti, 42, an air-conditioning mechanic, told a Washington Post interviewer Monday, “but the assassinations between Sunni and Shiites have increased.”
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A U.S. drone strike and air assaults by Pakistani military forces killed 38 people this weekend in tribal areas near Pakistan's border with Afghanistan, official sources reported Sunday.
The official American reaction to the coordinated attacks in Kabul, the Afghan capital, as well as at Jalalabad airbase, and in Paktika and Logar Provinces, reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of guerrilla warfare.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai has branded the Taliban’s 18-hour siege of Kabul and places across eastern Afghanistan on Sunday an intelligence failure and called for an investigation into NATO security operations.
Pointing to "the shaky, erratic and vague standpoint of the Americans" as one key reason for their decision, Taliban leaders in Afghanistan put the kibosh on plans to meet with U.S. envoys, releasing a statement on Thursday explaining the change of plans.
Claims made by NATO that Pakistan is in cahoots with the Afghan Taliban are tantamount to "old wine in an even older bottle," according to Pakistan's Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar. However, this particular batch of wine represents thousands of mandatory conversations (read: interrogations) versus Khar's official denial.
In the deadliest day for American troops since the war in Afghanistan began almost 10 years ago, 30 Americans and seven Afghan commandos died Saturday when the Chinook helicopter they were in was shot down by the Taliban.
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