Mark Steyn finds the elusive Iraqi military machine...As my colleague John Keegan asked yesterday, "Where is the enemy?" The answer, in terms of a formal Iraqi military presence, is that it's confined to the Baghdad broadcasting studio. On Iraqi TV, every Information Minister or Deputy Prime Minister who turns up to read the late Saddam's latest statement is wearing a uniform. In the Iraqi army, hardly anyone is.
You couldn't ask for a better visual summation: Iraq has no general, just the odd paunchy yes-man who plays one on TV. On the ground, it has no real manpower, just a few terrorists willing to push their comrades and the civilian population into the line of fire. (For the benefit of the more pedantic moral equivalists, I hasten to add that targeting the US military doesn't make you a terrorist, but using a pregnant woman as your weapon does.) |