For a taste of what’s to come from the September Iraq update provided by General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker, take a look at what Crocker told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee this morning. In video-conferenced testimony, the ambassador conceded that that Iraqi government is no “model of smoothly functioning efficiency” — which, last week’s benchmark report shows, is something of an understatement. Yet it’s Crocker’s job to prod the Iraqi government toward sectarian compromise and basic competence. What to do?
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=180342