I was tipped early to the Anbar Salvation Council by following stories on the group in the Arab media last September, and had detailed the groups development at Mudville in early October. I think the Arabs have a leg up on the Western press - the Arabs are interested in what goes on in Iraq, and aren't willing to commit national suicide just to spite George Bush. While individually they may or may not like the guy, they aren't obsessed with him the way western reporters are, and their coverage of Iraq is often actually not about George Bush.

There are a handfull of western reporters free of BDS, too - they'll be labelled as Bushbots (or something similar) by their afflicted comrades.

It's so much easier for us to cover this as a political horse race. It's on the cover of "The New York Times" today, what this means for the '08 election. But we're not asking the central national security question, because it seems that if as a reporter you do ask the national security question, all of a sudden you're carrying Bush's water. There are national security questions at stake, and we're ignoring them and the country is getting screwed.

Well Mr Burns...you obviously have never negotiated so much as a taxi ride in the Middle East.

Let me explain it in simple terms...Winning is Losing...Losing is Winning. Nothing is as it appears on the surface.

You also missed this little tidbit from June 2006
via Defenselink

Branigan stressed that Americans will not win the war on the insurgents; Iraqis will win that war, he said.

Or this tidbit from May 2005
via Defenselink

Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers said..."In the end, it is going to have to be the Iraqis that win this," he said.

If one can not understand the semantic(Culturally enormous) difference between the Americas winning with Iraqi help and the Iraqis winning with American help then one should restrict ones analysis of Defense Matters to $70 hammers and $300 toilet seats.

We start with a goody:

The increased prosecutions are meant to serve as a deterrent to a growing number of soldiers who are ambivalent about heading — or heading back — to Iraq and may be looking for a way out, several Army lawyers said in interviews. Using courts-martial for these violations, which before 2002 were treated mostly as unpunished nuisances, is a sign that active-duty forces are being stretched to their limits, military lawyers and mental health experts said.

So prosecuting expressly military offenses like AWOL or desertion is now proof that the active-duty force is being stretched thin? So is prosecuting things like insubordination also evidence of an overstretched Army? Might it be that commanders in wartime take a slightly dimmer view of those that avoid duty during wartime?

So let's get this straight: PROSECUTING deserters (and hence, seeking their punitive discharge) is evidence that the Army is stretched too thin. Yet when desertions (or more appropriately AWOLs) occurred during peacetime and was punished less, that meant the Army was ubermondo strong? Huh?

Now, I'll still go on to fisk the rest of this piece o' garbage article, but all you really need to know is this:

The Army prosecuted desertion far less often in the late 1990s, when desertions were more frequent, than it does now, when there are comparatively fewer.

More desertions + unpunished = strength.
Fewer desertions + punished = overstretched.
Got that? Me neither.

But hey, you want data? We got data!

From 2002 through 2006, the average annual rate of Army prosecutions of desertion tripled compared with the five-year period from 1997 to 2001, to roughly 6 percent of deserters, from 2 percent, Army data shows.

Between these two five-year spans — one prewar and one during wartime — prosecutions for similar crimes, like absence without leave or failing to appear for unit missions, have more than doubled, to an average of 390 per year from an average of 180 per year, Army data shows.

In an Army of over 1 million bodies (roughly 500K of which are active duty), a grand total of less than 1/10th of 1% are prosecuted. BROKEN! And remember folks--desertions are down from the salad days of "strength."

You want more bone-chilling numbers?

Most deserters list dissatisfaction with Army life or family problems as primary reasons for their absence, and most go AWOL in the United States. But since 2003, 109 soldiers have been convicted of going AWOL or deserting war zones in Iraq or Afghanistan, usually during their scheduled two-week leaves in the United States, Army officials said.

As Keanu might say...