Andrew Olmsted is headed to Iraq:
It seems that the situation in Iraq is worse than I thought. The Army has accepted my application to active duty and is sending me to Iraq as commander of a battalion MiTT team. That means I’ll embed with an Iraqi battalion and I and my team will attempt to train and assist that battalion to be able to stand on their own and serve the Iraqi government. Yes, I’m aware of the inherent difficulties in that mission, so you needn’t fill my comments with wry observations about what you think about the Iraqi Army. In about six months, I’ll be able to provide some firsthand experience, and we’ll see what comes of that.
A whole lot more Andrew Olmsteds commanding a lot more MiTT’s earlier in this thing would have been our best chance of success at this mission. I fear it’s too little, too late at this point but it’s a lot a more sane approach than simply sending random infantrymen to do … something.
My best wishes to Andrew for both mission success and a safe return for him and his men.
An aside: One of the dangers of reading these things via RSS feed is the lack of context. My first thought was that it is indeed worse than he thought if they’re sending Andrew Sullivan….
