Robert Kagan has written this weekend that the surge is succeeding and says
A front-page story in The Post last week suggested that the Bush administration has no backup plan in case the surge in Iraq doesn't work. I wonder if The Post and other newspapers have a backup plan in case it does.
He closes the article withNo one is asking American journalists to start emphasizing the "good" news. All they have to do is report what is occurring, though it may conflict with their previous judgments. Some are still selling books based on the premise that the war is lost, end of story. But what if there is a new chapter in the story?
As Kagan points out in his article the forces under Petraeus are changing their tactics and instead of raiding and then ceding that area back to the insurgents they are now holding it.Just the other day saw Petraeus's first press conference and the first time many of us have heard him speak. It was long and not terribly eventful but there is a sense that he's the right man for this job.
And in a bit of good news the Sunday Times UK is reporting that the Iranian General who was missing is now at a NATO base and has been spying on Iran for years:
AN Iranian general who defected to the West last month had been spying on Iran since 2003 when he was recruited on an overseas business trip, according to Iranian sources. This weekend Brigadier General Ali Reza Asgari, 63, the former deputy defence minister, is understood to be undergoing debriefing at a Nato base in Germany after he escaped from Iran, followed by his family. A daring getaway via Damascus was organised by western intelligence agencies after it became clear that his cover was about to be blown. Irans notorious secret service, the Vavak, is believed to have suspected that he was a high-level mole Asgari is said to have carried with him documents disclosing Irans links to terrorists in the Middle East. It is not thought that he had details of the countrys nuclear programme. An Israeli newspaper, Yedioth Aharonot, claimed this weekend that Mossad, Israels external security service, had orchestrated his defection.
~Brian
