Best Defense
Thomas E. Ricks' daily take on national security.

Nir Rosen does Iraq ‘09

Nir is not optimistic. I think his piece has the ring of truth. (HT to Abu Lynch) Meanwhile, I think this line from the Sunday New York Times is becoming the media narrative of the spring-and I think Alissa Rubin and other reporters are correct to pursue this line: Some of the Sunnis also worry ...

586802_090413_cloudB2.jpg
586802_090413_cloudB2.jpg

Nir is not optimistic. I think his piece has the ring of truth. (HT to Abu Lynch)

Meanwhile, I think this line from the Sunday New York Times is becoming the media narrative of the spring-and I think Alissa Rubin and other reporters are correct to pursue this line:

Some of the Sunnis also worry that the Shiite-led government has begun singling out the councils’ leaders for arrest while their chief patron, the American military, slowly abandons them.”

Along the same lines, Stars & Stripes, the military newspaper that offers the best coverage of the Iraq war nowadays, offers this bit of wisdom from the land of talking animals:

The hunter goes to the rabbit and says, ‘You are smaller, your legs are shorter than my dog. Why can’t he catch you?’ The rabbit says ‘I am running for myself but the dog is running for you [. . .] That’s the difference.”

Timothy K. Hamilton/Flickr

Thomas E. Ricks covered the U.S. military from 1991 to 2008 for the Wall Street Journal and then the Washington Post. He can be reached at ricksblogcomment@gmail.com. Twitter: @tomricks1

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