Cobb

A few comments:

1.) I'm new to blogging on my site so I just found you within the past few days ... I like what I see.

2.) I read Tacitus after being linked there via Reynolds. I guess there is much that may be right as written, but, I believe it is far too easy for those not really in the know to get carried away.

This (http://newzilla.com/NN0503048.htm)maybe says it better. With all due respect, the Middle East is easy to opine on and exceedingly difficult to really know what should be done ... best left to the smart guys working it long and hard day after day, year after year.

I will be reading you daily.

Tony aka Newzilla

Ditto to Tony Newzilla's post on his deft succinct Iraqi war opine here.

Yes, Cobb, we do make the world's best hot-dogs, movies, computers, rock and roll, R&B, and Jazz!! (screw the French copy cats)

However, I beg to differ with your opinion on Colin Powell. Unlike you, I do not believe Powell will be a "footnote" in history, cojones aside. This superior man of African-American descent (did you know he was related to "Dubya" via their paternal British heritage?)is too valuable a political treasure (instrument, ploy, tool?) for the Republican party to let him slide down the GOP totem pole.

Mark my words, Colie will run in the next after this election. Who [besides McCain] would be better candidate to lead our country in the tightening global village? Don't hate me because I 'm right..Cobby! See you at the poles in 2008 -;)

O ye of little faith.

This is a war and not a war limited to Iraq.

Patience please.... we must all learn to understand the gap between desire and gratification.

This large swath of history we are moving over is not about an engagement in or around Fallujah, nor is it about a movement to liberate Iraq or bring democracy to the middle east. Those are just stops along the way at best or mere talking points at worst.

To quote one of the original Americans: We have not yet begun to fight.

To quote a Marine officer asked outside of Fallujah how his "offensive" was going, "We're just playing patty-cake with these guys. When we go on an offensive, you'll know it."

I have no special insight into the day by day tactical moves -- I'll leave that to the armchairs, but this is a campaign that is not only going to take place in one or two countries or across a year and a few months.

Liberation is nice. Democracy for Iraq would be better. But it is not, in the long run, about either of these things. Neither, I hasten to add, is it about the oil beneath Iraq.

Iraq is important for the bases. The motto of Iraq should really be "It's about the bases, stupid."

While I like Tacitus, and his heart's in the right place, he isn't exactly the steadiest of pundits. He tends to get a little squirrelly in the heat of the moment. "Never as bad as it seems, never as good as it appears" seems to sum up the last year. When we thought things were going well over the new year, this prison-torture scenario was playing out. When we thought the war was mired between Karbala and Basra, the Iraqi army was actually being crucified by airpower.

I don't know who's more right - Wretchard or Tacitus. But I've always been told - the fastest way through an ambush is straight forward. Unless you're Marines, in which case it's straight forward, turn around, back through, and repeat until there's no more ambush to shoot at.

I trust the Marines, even when they surprise and confuse me.

I'm with Mitch - Wretchard at the Belmont Club has some very good points to make about the overall strategy ("We've learned how to out-Hudna the Arabs"). The thing to remember is that they are still surrounded in Fallujah so time is certainly on our side. It is utterly predictable that the press (and the Fallujah resistance for essentially the same reasons) will cast the pull-back in the worst possible light for the Americans. But, from a military standpoint, why not wait them out a bit?

The only possible downside is that it gives the press more time to undercut the war. But, while I think that internal "cut-and-run" temptations are the greatest risk we face, I also believe that the American public is very different today than it was in the late '60s.