jayeff

There is little or no attempt to explain what motivates the "insurgents". Quite the contrary: the media by and large goes along with the government spin that they are evil men who kill for its own sake. We simply ignore the fact that their country has been invaded by "heathens" and that the Sunnis in particular have good reason to fear that payback time may not be far off, once the Shi'ites are in power.

And it is slightly off topic, but I also wish there were more discussion as to what is going to happen when the Shi'ites do come to power and draw Iraq ever closer to Iran. That alliance would be contrary to everything US policy in the region has tried to achieve over the last 50+ years and it is impossible the White House isn't seeing it as almost inevitable. So we have at most 2 or 3 years during which the people we are trying to put in positions of power may be able to exercise some degree of restraint, but then what? Covert manipulation in the region was already failing. The regimes in Kuwait and Saudia have maybe 5-10 years left. By the time this all shakes out, we won't have a single ally among the oil-producing countries and given our need for oil, we won't even have the option of turning the whole region into a giant parking lot.