Potemkin Village
While driving home this afternoon I heard an interview (WMA only, sorry) on The World with a reporter who was kidnapped in Iraq two weeks ago but has since been released. The whole thing is worth listening to, but there were a couple of points that I think were important.
- The reporter was kidnapped by insurgents working alongside Iraqi police — the guy was captured because he police at a checkpoint told him to get into the kidnappers' car. There has been a lot of rhetoric flying back and forth between the Bush and Kerry camps (and between various factions of the Bush Administration) about exactly how many trained police are deployed in Iraq. But what good are policemen if they're working for the other side?
- The kidnappers verified that he was, in fact, a reporter and not a spy by looking him up on Google in an internet cafe. The internet (and cell phones even more, I think) have lifted the fog of war in Iraq. This is good and bad for both sides, obviously, but probably worse for us because we used to have a lock on the tech to pierce the fog.
On a related note, Juan Cole has an essay (just published in the LA Times) about what the U.S. would be like if it were Iraq. It is a little bit ridiculous but is worth reading to get a sense of perspective on the magnitude of the mess we have created.
Posted by coughlin at 3:36 PM
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