McCAFFREY AND THE SURGE….Matt Yglesias, blogging “curtly” from his iPhone, summarizes Barry McCaffrey’s congressional testimony today:
General McCaffrey says we shouldn’t even bother to ask whether or not the surge os working until petraeus — ‘the most talented person I have ever met’ — has had a year. He also says we need to give the iraq security forces many more resources. But he says we need to reduce the number of troops we have in iraq or the army will start unraveling in april. He says we can achieve that by leaving the cities. Acknowledges that this is inconsistent with pet’s strategy.
This is crazy. It’s completely incoherent. The whole point of the surge is to pacify the cities enough to allow some chance at political reconciliation. If you leave the cities, the whole thing falls apart. How can supposedly knowledgeable people say stuff like this?
