A Change of Plans

I've decided to change the travel plan, and will not visit Ramadi. There are several reasons. I will lose a couple of days transiting to Ramadi, days that can be well spent embedded. Here at the Government Center in Fallujah, the Military Transition Team, the Police Transition Team, and Charlie 1/24 Marines are all in the same compound. I've spent some time with the MTT and went on a night raid with Charlie 1/24, and want to interact with these units here in Fallujah. I will provide detailed updates on the missions of the PTT and MTT here in Fallujah in the near future. I hope you will not be disappointed with this decision.

In the News

The Christian Science Monitor's Dante Chinni writes about my current embed in Fallujah and the blog in general. Mr. Chinni does have some kind words to say, and does encourage people to read. I will state that Mr. Chinni should look at my full writings on Pakistan and Somalia and Afghanistan, and even Iraq, before stating my “posts can sound a lot like government talking points filtered through war stories.” I fail to see how saying we lost western Pakistan to al Qaeda and the Taliban, and Somalia to the Islamic Courts, and failed to subdue al Qaeda in Ramadi and Muqtada al-Sadr, are government talking points. In fact, I've made some people in the government very uncomfortable.

Pakistan, The New York Times, and the International Crisis Group

I'm happy to see the New York Times and the International Crisis Group have finally come around on Pakistan. I've been discussing the fall of western Pakistan in detail since January of 2006, and wrote almost 60 articles on this subject. It would have been nice to have received some credit for this, particularly from the International Crisis Group, which virtually pirated my work for segments of the report (start at page 22 on). But, as Mr. Chinni notes, my “posts can sound a lot like government talking points filtered through war stories.” If so, what does that make the New York Times and the International Crisis Group?