Catching Up

• An interesting article on the PhD's who are now running the war in Iraq.


• The US Air Force is refusing to count the dead from it's air strikes, and even refusing in some cases to count the ammunition it expends for the same reason. Aside from a moral problem with not counting the dead Iraqis you're there to save, you can't expect the USAF to get better if they don't recognize the problem.


• And for a bit more than a week now, Josh Marshall has been blogging furiously on the rash of shoot-downs of US helicopters in Iraq. For the first month of the year there's been a dramatic increase in the number of downed helicopters and dead soldiers.

That last bit is worrisome for a few reasons. It's been clear for a while now that the Iraqis are learning to fight the Americans and adapt extremely quickly. The downing of US helicopters (aside from having Vietnam and Afghanistan paralells) seems to be more due to better Iraqi tactics and less to any new weapons.

So, another clear reason the US needs to leave Iraq: the longer they stay, the better trained the insurgents will be. It took two summers for IEDs and suicide car bombers to make their way to Afghanistan. Any wagers on how long it will take for this innovation?