The administration is trotting out a shiny new narrative on Iraq: Petraus's Anbar Awakening has brought around the Sunni Tribes, who are now our allies in a battle against the wicked excesses of Al Qaeda in Iraq.
But what if everything we've heard about AQI is as overblown as the original scare-stories about Saddam's WMD?
Andrew Tilghman, a former Iraq correspondent for the Stars and Stripes newspaper, has an article that just hit the Washington monthly that takes an in-depth look at just how big a movement AQI really is – and the answer isn’t pretty. Particularly since the Anbar Awakening strategy is based around arming Sunnis to fight AQI, it’s pretty important to know just how much AQI there is... and what we’re really arming those tribal leaders for. If AQI is "is a microscopic terrorist organization," then what will the Sunnis do with all those guns?
Never mind the fog of war... Never mind the incredible moving casualty figures... This is midnight in the coal mine, and we really have no clue about what’s going on here...