An e-mail from a friend who teaches at a military institution:

Rich,
What Burns lays out in that passage you cited squares entirely with what I’m hearing from our arriving students, many of whom are coming straight from the AOR. They, and my colleagues–especially Army and Marine types–who have served in Iraq earlier firmly believe that the place will descend rapidly into a hellish mix of genocide and true civil war and set the stage for the rise of a Taliban-like terror state. Other than that, our withdrawal should be rather uneventful.
What I still find maddening is this passage:
“He said locals had pinpointed hide-outs of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, an extremist group that claims to have ties to Osama bin Laden’s network. . . .”
I realize that the thought police at the NYT use “Mesopotamia” to mask the link between al-Qaida and operations in Iraq. But the line “claims to have ties” is just too much to take. How many times do Zawahiri and a legion of jihadi propagandists have to say that Iraq is the “central front” in the war against the “Crusaders,” call for holy warriors to travel to “Mesopotamia” to fight against us or gloat over what they perceive is Congress’ impending surrender to get these nitwits to realize that Osama and the boys have validated those “claims.” Did not the late Zarqawi pledge allegiance to bin Laden? Did he not receive guidance and advice from Zawahiri? Imagine someone in 1941 writing that “the Germans, who claim to have ties to Japan, declared war on the US several days after the attack on Pearl Harbor.” Like it or not, the enemy sees this as a seamless struggle and one they think they can win, thanks in part to the good folks at the New York Times. And I won’t go on about the use of the near-meaningless phrase “extremist.”