McCain & Petraeus in 2008!
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From a a 39-page letter seized during a US raid on an al-Qaeda base near Samarra in November:
Abu-Tariq, al-Qaeda leader (who has a poor understanding of geometry):
“There were almost 600 fighters in our sector before the tribes changed course 360 degrees . . . Many of our fighters quit and some of them joined the deserters . . . As a result of that the number of fighters dropped down to 20 or less.”
“We were mistreated, cheated and betrayed by some of our brothers who used to be part of the Jihadi movement, therefore we must not have mercy on those traitors until they come back to the right side or get eliminated completely.”
From a bitter 16-page testament written last October by a local al-Qaeda leader near Balad, north of Baghdad, seized in another November raid:
Unnamed emir, Anbar province:
“The Islamic State of Iraq [al-Qaeda] is faced with an extraordinary crisis, especially in al-Anbar province. Al-Qaeda’s expulsion from Anbar created weakness and psychological defeat. This also created panic, fear and the unwillingness to fight.
“The morale of the fighters went down and they wanted to be transferred to administrative positions rather than be fighters. There was a total collapse in the security structure of the organisation.”
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From Tim Hames, The Times Online:
America has a long tradition of looking to military leaders in times of turmoil. This has stretched through Washington to Grant to Eisenhower and might have placed Colin Powell in the Oval Office in 1996 if he had been prepared to stand. General Petraeus, who holds a doctorate from Princeton University, is the greatest military thinker of his generation. He has managed to take a vast army that was effective at conventional fighting but close to useless when confronted with a guerrilla enemy and turn it into an organisation that can today do counter-insurgency superbly. This is an achievement that makes turning a supertanker around on the high seas during inclement weather look as easy as clicking one’s fingers. General Petraeus is a genius.
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