Despite all the promises, the Government is still achieving nothing with regard to its Iraqi employees. Leave aside, for the moment, the considerable numbers who are being rejected. Even the accepted – in so far as this category means anything yet – are still in Iraq, still on the streets, and still in danger. “I…
Read More I am still in Iraq…I hear nothing from your Government!I’m very glad to see that Abu Muqawama, Phil Carter, and Lt-Col. Bob Bateman have been quick to leap on the inevitable attempt to swiftboatise this story. Especially as Abu, I thought, was showing worrying signs of going into the “good news the MSM is suppressing” mental death spiral and turning progressively into Blackfive With…
Read More SupportThat’s what happens when an Antonov-12 runs right off the runway, engines churning, and hits a parked Boeing 727. But that isn’t the interesting bit. The 727 was 9L-LEF; and what it was doing in Pointe Noire, Congo-Brazzaville, when it’s meant to be with Iraqi Airways is a very good question indeed. Like all the…
Read More Crunch!Under-reported story of the week; reported, of course, by Ackerman. I think this is going to be very significant indeed. Roll back, if we may, to the winter of 2006; it had just become authorised knowledge that things in Iraq were unpeachy, Rumsfeld had just been thrown off the sleigh, and the Baker-Hamilton commission was…
Read More A ragged army fixing bayonets…This just keeps getting worse: The Times reports that the Government has rejected 300 out of 700 Iraqi employees who applied for resettlement, mostly under the 12 month rule. That’s a rejection rate of just under half. Curiously, the Foreign Office’s own scheme has turned down 38 out of 180; this seems to suggest that…
Read More Iraqi Employees: It Gets WorseIt’s been said, I think by Alanbrooke, that strategy consists in the proper handling of reserves. Looking at the situation with this framework, what can we say about Iraq? It’s now been a year since the announcement of “The Surge”, the deployment of the US Army’s strategic reserve in Iraq. And what’s happened? First, it…
Read More Ou est la masse de manoeuvre?Washington Post reporter Rajiv Chandrasekaran’s book on the days of the CPA in Iraq has been heavily praised; showered with awards and links and stuff. So I was pretty keen to get a copy. Just think of the horrible guts that might be in there. Unfortunately, I can report that it is desperately overrated. To…
Read More Imperial Life in the Emerald City: ReviewThe good, good people responsible for the Iraqi employees’ resettlement scheme have hit upon a brilliant idea. It turns out that if you have completed the canonical 12 months, you are liable to be refused assistance if you stopped working for the British because you were being threatened; this is called “absenteeism”. Even if, as…
Read More Our Charming GovernmentThis NYT story is an example, I think, of the way one’s mental models control one’s perception. The report deals with a proposed U.S. policy of providing the Frontier Corps, the paramilitary police of the North-West Frontier Province, with aid directly rather than via the Pakistani military. This is one thing. It is not an…
Read More Pakistan, NOIA, and a rebel data centreDan Hardie keeps getting desperate e-mail from stranded Iraqi employees of the British Army. I haven’t yet, but I do regularly get people on NewSkies satellite-Internet links searching for information on how to apply for asylum. Expect dramatic news from him tomorrow; you’ll need to write to them. Apparently David Miliband doesn’t think the matter…
Read More Slower and slower