First it was Condi Rice deciding that talking with Syria and Iran would not be such a bad idea after all. Now the operational commander of US troops in Iraq says he wants to talk to the terrorists, err... I mean the
insurgents.
"We want to reach back to them, and we're talking about cease-fires and maybe signing some things that say they won't conduct operations against the Government of Iraq or against coalition forces," he said.
There's a lot of US PsyOps behind all this, of course, and a lot of propaganda. The main line being spun in the media now is that Iraqi insurgents have suddenly decided to confront their allies from Al Quaeda, so the US troops can suddenly give them free reign.
As Lt Odierno was speaking to reporters by a video link to the Pentagon in Washington, residents in west Baghdad reported that insurgents from the nationalist 1920 brigades were fighting their former Al Qaeda allies.
US commanders hope to convince local Iraqi resistance groups to split from Islamist outfits like Al Qaeda that are thought irreconcilable.
In the western province of Anbar, tribal leaders have already turned on insurgents.
"It's happening in small levels. Now, again, it's just beginning, so we have a lot of work to do in this," Lt Odierno said, noting that Shiite groups such as the Mehdi Army might be won over along with Sunni insurgents.
Of course this has nothing to do with the fact that Bush's "surge" is a miserable failure, the US Army has had enough of it, and Republicans back in Washington are ready to walk away from the whole bloody disaster. Nothing whatsoever.
