Michael Yon, reporting on the latest US discoveries in Baqubah, where troops are bringing security to the populace:
"The official reported that on a couple of occasions in Baqubah, al Qaeda invited to lunch families they wanted to convert to their way of thinking. In each instance, the family had a boy, he said, who was about eleven years old. As Lt. David Wallach interpreted the man’s words, I saw Wallach go blank and silent. He stopped interpreting for a moment. I asked Wallach, ‘What did he say?’ Wallach said that at these luncheons, the families were sat down to eat. And then their boy was brought in with his mouth stuffed. The boy had been baked. Al Qaeda served the boy to his family."
I wonder why the retreaters in Congress think this sort of thing will stop if we withdraw. How can they not care? David Kilcullen, in the Small Wars Journal, reports on what we’re up to in the surge.
UPDATE Some of Wretchard’s commenters think the official was telling an old lie, but W. brings out family stories of Japanese atrocities in the Phillipines in WW2. Meanwhile, the BBC finds Petraeus’s moves hopeful, if possibly too late. If so, I think we can blame the Pentagon.
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