Friday, September 21, 2007

Judging a book by its cover

By Libby

Actually, it's a long piece in Canada's MacLeans magazine written by Patrick Graham who has spent many years in Iraq both before and after the invasion. He's befriended some of the insurgents that used to be our enemies and are now are our Anbar Awakened allies and offers up a insider's view of what's really happening in Iraq. It's telling for instance, that the safest way to get to Fallujah, some 40 minutes outside of Baghdad, is to fly to Syria and drive six hours back through the desert because the checkpoints along that route are more dependably survivable.

If you want more quotes and analysis, you can find them through Memeorandum but I'm just going to post the one quote that struck me as the most illustrative of why the surge is "working."
Deaths from sectarian killings are reportedly down, in large measure because there are few mixed neighbourhoods left. Almost the entire Sunni middle class lives in Jordan or Syria. If you are named Omar, a traditional Sunni name, chances are you are dead or living abroad.

Nothing like purging the potential victims to drive down the death toll.

Meanwhile, get your wingnut wankery here. The Raging Rightys are appalled -- appalled I tell you -- that a magazine would use a photoshop to sell their product, which of course is nothing like posting photoshops of say Hillary or stupid Mohammed cartoons to get attention. As for reading the content, well, if not reading is good enough for their president, it's good enough for them. Crittenden read it and said it was stupid, so what else do you need to know? And Bejus, look at that picture will you....

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