Special Vacation Update

The travel blog will get an update sometime soon. El Salvador's slow internet speeds is currently preventing me from posting photos. So, I thought I would do an emergency Vacation edition of the News blog. What could bring me out of my vacation shell, you ask:

This: http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/06/07/penhaul.iraq/index.html?eref=rss_topstories

Apparently, the United States, completely unfamiliar with the term blowback and lacking any sense of irony, has decide to start funding nationalist guerrillas, including Saddam Hussein loyalists. The reason, as explained in the article is that:

"a result of the deepening divisions among Iraqi insurgent factions, was on display earlier this week at a highway intersection in the town of Tahrir. There, a group of some 15 insurgents publicly chanted: 'Death to al Qaeda.'"

OK. So the U.S. Army has suddenly discovered what people like Juan Cole -- not to mention myself -- have been saying for quite sometime now. But how did they ever get such a brilliant idea?

"U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Benjamin Mixon, commander of Multi-National Division North, believes U.S. counterinsurgency efforts in Vietnam and Latin America offer precedents for the strategy he is now pushing in this region of Iraq.

'We've seen this in previous counterinsurgency operations, using local nationals, arming them and forming them into scouts,' he told CNN. 'That's the primary role we want to use them in. They know the territory. They know the enemy.'"

Oh this is just great. Apparently the model for Iraq is either Vietnam or Latin America. Two shining examples of US foreign policy. Guess it's not too long until we start hearing about massive civilian casualties, torture, and death squads. Oh wait...