"All we're doing is setting the clock back to 2005," said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to offer a stark assessment. "The militias are fully armed, and al-Qaeda in Iraq is trying to move back from the west. These are the conditions now, and we're sitting back looking at PowerPoint slides and whitewashing."
You can read the full article here. Individuals on their fourth or fifth tour are restricted to bases. The U.S. forces leadership is focused on Iraq's election day and U.S. troops leaving the country. It took General Odierno over a month to publicly acknowledge Iranian interference in the upcoming Iraqi elections, something General Petraeus noted to the press within weeks of the de-baathification bans by Ali Faisal al Lami and Ahmed Chalabi. This calls into question which general has the better grasp of conditions on the ground.
In January we made our own comparisons to 2005, but most recently detailed the reasons for our pessimistic outlook. You can read "Explaining the Pessimism on Iraq" here.
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