It Looks Like the Spirit of Judy Miller Is Alive and Well at the New York Times
John Burns and Sabrina Tavernise of the New York Times write:
Promising Troops Where They Aren't Really Wanted - New York Times: Shiites, the principal victims of Saddam Hussein's repression, had joined with Iraqi Kurds in hailing the American-led invasion in 2003, seeing it as opening their way to power. But once they consolidated their control through two elections in 2005, they began distancing themselves from the Americans, seeing their liberators increasingly as an impediment to the full control they craved.... American officials have warned that with lessening American oversight, Shiite leaders might shift to a sectarian strategy that punished Sunni insurgents but spared Shiite militias. The execution 11 days ago of Saddam Hussein, carried out in haste by the Maliki government over American urgings that it be delayed until the legal paperwork was completed, only reinforced such fears...
Might shift to a sectarian strategy? American officials have warned that Shiite leaders might shift to a sectarian strategy that punished Sunni insurgents but spared Shiite militias? Might at some point in the future shift to a sectarian strategy?
Why not say the truth: that Shiite leaders have shifted to a sectarian strategy that punished Sunni insurgents but spared Shiite militias? Why oh why can't we have a better press corps?
We do have pieces of it. The McClatchy News Service--the wire service formerly known as Knight-Ridder. Here is Nancy Youssef:
McClatchy Washington Bureau | 01/09/2007 | Soldiers doubt an influx of American troops will benefit Iraqi army: MUQDADIYAH, Iraq - It was supposed to be a reconciliation meeting, a get-together to introduce the Sunni Muslim mayor and police chief of this city north of Baghdad to the mostly Shiite Muslim Iraqi soldiers who'd been assigned to protect their town.
But as the mayor and police chief approached the entrance to the Iraqi army base here last month, Iraqi troops seized their bodyguards and tossed them to the ground. Then the soldiers put their boots on the bodyguards' backs, a literal reminder that the Sunni officials were under the boot of the Shiite military....
In the end, no matter what the Americans do, the Iraqis will find their own way, the U.S. commander of the trainers here said. "There is no doubt in my mind that when the coalition does leave that this situation will get resolved within a fairly short period of time. These people will figure it out. It may be ugly. It may be very ugly. But they will figure it out," said Lt. Col. Jody Creekmore, who arrived in Iraq last summer from Huntsville, Ala., leaving behind his three teenage children. U.S. soldiers here say the Iraqis can fire their weapons and run checkpoints well. But the Iraqis don't agree on what it means to be a soldier in the post-Saddam Hussein military, whom to shoot at and from whom they should defend Iraq....
Existing side-by-side in this farming community are al-Qaida fighters who want to transform Iraq into a Sunni Islamic state, Shiite militiamen loyal to firebrand cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and his Mahdi Army militia, and foreign fighters battling to stamp their own form of religious extremism on Iraq. They hide in palm groves, infiltrate army units and take over neighborhood homes. Local commanders say that other government officials often undercut efforts to defeat these enemies. Col. Ishmael Ahmed Ali, the acting brigade commander for the Iraqi army division that's in charge of Muqdadiyah, said he knew that Shiite militias had infiltrated the battalion long before they stomped the mayor's and the police chief's guards. But because of the government, he can't fight them....
The American trainers said teaching counterinsurgency doctrine had become secondary to more basic pursuits, such as how to load a weapon, take care of equipment and even find basic supplies: food, water and bullets. In U.S commanders' sparse offices and barracks, piles of books on counterinsurgency tactics sit unused behind desks...
