In two prior posts, NW Iraq progress report: Colonel Robert Brown, and NW Iraq progress report: Colonel Robert Brown, I referenced the DOD briefings on progress in Ninawa and Anbar provinces.
Today we have access to highly recommended additional analysis: a Flash presentation on Bill Roggio’s Fourth Rail, and Chester’s Reflections on the Flash Presentation on The Anbar Campaign.
Chester’s post is a must read - I cannot add anything useful:
Bill Roggio, Marvin Hutchens, and Steve Schippert from The Word Unheard (who is revealing his name for the first time) have created a Flash presentation of recent operations in Iraq, specifically in the West, along the Syrian border. I know they’ve been working on it for a while and the product is outstanding. It covers the period Aug 27-Sep 17th. Please go check it out immediately.
UPDATE: The thing that makes this presentation so powerful is its complete independence from the normally practiced way of reporting the war. Most war reports make sweeping generalizations from a few small bits of first-hand observation, for better or worse. They rarely tie military actions together in an operational whole (note: Wretchard has just pointed this out as well at The Belmont Club).
To give a concrete example of what I mean, I’d like to do a comparison of three texts. First, Chasing the Ghosts an article in the September 18th edition of Time magazine, and secondly, an interview with DoD News: Press Briefing on Overview of Operation Restoring Rights in Tall Afar, Iraq, and finally, DoD News: Special Defense Department Operational Update Briefing on Operations in Northwest Iraq [h-t to Belmont Club over the past week or so for all three sources].
We can start with the titles of the articles themselves. “Chasing the Ghosts” of course implies trying to catch something that is forever out of one’s grasp. It of course reeks of drama, but not of a good kind, but of a tragic sort of failure. The other DOD headlines relfect the mundane manner in which the DOD assigns and tracks its news. These two documents should be pushed out to every media outlet possible, not just released on the Pentagon website. The headlines reflect that mentality.
You’ll want to get right over there to read the whole thing. (ht: Cori Dauber)
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