Helluva Day

Sorry for such a late start--and we didn't even have a serious meltdown on our Storage Area Network like we did last week...

Anyway, in case you're wondering (yeah, right): I spent this morning in a training class, learning about the latest and greatest in SQL and SP1 from the evil empire--and this afternoon I've been stuck in a relatively easy, but surprisingly steady help desk shift that's kept me from even reading, much less posting.

That said, I managed to get through Whiskey Bar's penultimate post (at least for now)...and damn, is it worth looking at:

In an institution where can-do optimism is about as mandatory as patriotism, it's remarkable to hear Army generals talking like this:

Military action won't end insurgency,
growing number of U.S. officers believe....

Truth is, even if Centcom had twice the troop strength, it's hard to see how the insurgency could be defeated -- that is, reduced to military, political and economic irrelevance -- on a battlefield as chaotic and complex as Iraq. There are simply too many cross-cutting social and cultural and ethnic and tribal realities that stand in the way of a successful counterinsurgency effort, unless the idea is simply to pound every city, town and village in the Sunni Triangle as flat as Fallujah.

Even then the insurgents probably would still be hiding in the rubble, waiting for the Americans to go pound somewhere else. The Army may have unchallenged ownership of whatever ground it happens to be standing on, but as soon as local control is handed back over to the Iraqis, the infiltration and the intimidation begin all over again.

But don't take my word for it--read the whole thing.

Things might be slowing down just a bit here. Catch up with y'all then.