I served here as a soldier, and returning as a writer in part explains the change in perspective. This trip, my job is assessment and analysis, not action. Even with a fast-paced itinerary that takes us to Fallujah, Tal Afar and Kirkuk, there is more time to reflect.
Today, the summer heat is just as hard as it was a year ago, the sand haze in the air just as thick. But the Baghdad of June 2005 is not the Baghdad I left in September 2004.
"Metrics" is the military buzzword — how do we measure progress or regress in Iraq? The piles of bricks around Iraqi homes is a positive. Downtown cranes sprout over city-block-sized construction projects. The negatives are all too familiar — terror bombs and the slaughter of Iraqi citizens.
Last year — on July 2, I recall — I saw six Iraqi guardsmen manning a position beneath a freeway overpass. It was the first time I saw independently deployed Iraqi forces.
Now I see senior Iraqi officers in the hallways of Faw Palace, conducting operational liaison with U.S. and coalition forces. I hear reports of the Iraqi army conducting independent street-clearing and neighborhood-search operations. Brig. Gen. Karl Horst of the U.S. 3rd Infantry Division told me about an Iraqi battalion's success on perennially challenging Haifa Street.
In February, under the direction of an Iraqi colonel who is rapidly earning a reputation as Iraq's Rudy Giuliani, the battalion drove terrorists from this key Baghdad drag. Last year, Haifa Street was a combat zone where U.S. and Iraqi security forces showed up in Robo-Cop garb — helmets, armor, Bradleys, armored Humvees. Horst told me that he and his Iraqi counterpart now have tea in a sidewalk cafe along the once-notorious boulevard. Of course, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's suicide bombers haunt this fragile calm
Thank you for posting that bit from Austin Bay.
I think he's in a better position to judge.
Cross linking to the full article.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1430438/posts
It is very good.
Thank you. ;o)