Ya don’t say
“Duh” headline of the day:
Seriously?
Most of the people/groups quoted in the piece have been saying that sort of thing for the last couple of years. It’s nice to see the NYT finally catching up.
Allah predicts the usual suspects, like Green Glennwald – er, Glenn Greenwald, will howl at the moon and accuse the NYT of being shills of the administration. T’would be amusing to see, considering how he excitedly reported on the NYT’s piece about the administration’s consideration of troop reductions next year by up to 50% – an article that Don Surber points out is little more than recycled news. Captain Ed also makes another important point about that troop reduction piece:
In fact, this shows the long-term view of the Pentagon and most of the DC establishment. It acknowledges that our long-term enemy has to be removed from Iraq, and we need to tool our deployment there to fight the primary battle. It won’t take 150,000 troops spread all over the country to fight AQI; we will need to focus on the Sunni areas of Anbar and Diyala. We have to continue to support the tribes who have allied themselves with us against the primarily foreign fighters. We can draw down significantly while focusing our attention on the insurgent hotbeds in these areas, as long as we can continue to train and support the Iraqi Army in its mission to secure the rest of Iraq.
We’ve had hints of this for months. Bush talked about this transition when he announced the surge strategy in January. Defense Secretary Robert Gates spoke about the need to remain committed to the fight against the terrorists this week, while adjusting to the improving performance of the Iraqi Army and their increasing reliability.
We cannot leave Iraq altogether and fight Islamist terrorism. They’re attempting to base themselves in western Iraq, with Syrian assistance. We can’t fight that by deploying to Okinawa and leaving the region to the radicals. This planning takes that reality and adapts our military approach to it. It should come as no surprise at all that the Pentagon and the White House have already begun thinking about the next phase of the war.
Meanwhile, the Associated Press continues the MSM’s obsession with troop deaths ‘milestones.’