Pearl Harbor Day

Blogger was down--for me at least--most of the day. But individual web logs could be read, and I came across some stuff on Today in Iraq. As noted last week, I came across the site wandering around the internet--wish I could remember where I stumbled across the link--and it's now on my daily must-read list.

Here are a couple of paragraphs from a New York Times op-ed piece by Lucian K. Truscott IV

"It's really not helpful when people down in Baghdad and politicians back in Washington refer to the `disorganized and ineffective' enemy we supposedly face," said one young officer, as we walked out of a battalion battle briefing that had been concerned largely with the tactics of an enemy force that is clearly well organized and very, very effective. After spending more than a week with the soldiers of Bravo Company, I know that they resent not only the inaccuracy of such statements, but the implication that soldiers facing a disorganized and ineffective enemy have an easy job.

No matter what you call this stage of the conflict in Iraq — the soldiers call it a guerrilla war while politicians back home often refer to it misleadingly and inaccurately as part of the amorphous "war on terror" — it is without a doubt a nasty, deadly war. And the people doing the fighting are soldiers, not the civilian employees of Kellogg, Brown & Root, or the officials of the Coalition Provisional Authority, or the visiting bigwigs from the Defense Department.

There are three other articles that I strongly encourage everyone to look at: in this one, a series of letters from the online version of Stars and Stripes give a range of opinions on the conflict. In particular, the last letter (scroll to the bottom) offers a perspective on the Thanksgiving Dinner attended by Bush last week. The Telegraph UK reports that money earmarked for reconstruction in Iraq is instead being used to finance attacks on US soldiers:

One senior commander in the Sunni Triangle - a stronghold of Saddam loyalists - believes that his own money has come back to him in the form of rocket-propelled grenade and mortar attacks.

Lt ColAubrey Garner, of 1-68 Armoured Battalion, based near the northern city of Balad, said: "If I go and rebuild a school I am convinced that a certain percentage of the money we put in will be diverted into paying for attacks on the coalition."

And then there's this from Reuters, describing how Operation Win-Hearts-and-Minds is pretty much a bust:

MOSUL, Iraq, Dec 7 (Reuters) - Heyil Qundis watched the U.S. general in charge of the northern Iraqi city of Mosul appear on television to insist U.S. troops were liberators and friends.

Qundis was unimpressed, the memory still fresh of U.S. soldiers recently raiding his house at dawn.

"I opened my door to see a gun pointing at my face and four American soldiers. I thought they were going to arrest me," said Qundis, a taxi driver.

"They had no interpreter or policeman. They came in and turned everything upside down looking for weapons. My wife was terrified -- how are we supposed to like them?"

I'll be adding a permanent link to Today in Iraq...in fact, I'll post this now and move to other topics after I republish.