60 Minutes did an airport-road segment last night. It managed to put a negative spin on the fact that the road is safer. And the correspondent, Lara Logan, was ridiculously over-dramatic, like she was an actress playing a TV reporter. Yet, anytime journalists relay anything about what our troops are doing in Iraq, you learn about some incredible people. A central figure last night was a guy named Lieutenant Colonol Geoffrey Slack. At one point, he and his men found a suspicious object on the road. He goes to give it a close look himself:

LOGAN: (Voiceover) The can turns out to be a bomb powerful enough to kill
anyone within 50 yards.
How do you know it’s not going to explode when you walk up to it like that?
Lt. Col. SLACK: You’re not going to put this on–on TV because my wife will
have a heart attack.
LOGAN: I’m going to put it on.
Lt. Col. SLACK: It’s either I do it or they do it [his men].

There was also this exchange:

LOGAN: Why does it take three battalions, two Iraqi battalions and an American
battalion, and all that firepower to secure that stretch of road?
Lt. Col. SLACK: Because you’re dealing with–you’re trying to find an enemy
who looks exactly like the people you don’t want to kill.

If you want a one sentence summary of counter-insurgency and its difficulties that would be it, “you’re trying to find an enemy who looks exactly like the people you don’t want to kill”–and if you do kill, it will set your cause back immeasurably.