I heard of how doubts about the legality of invasion were the closest the British military had come to mutiny. Of how the Pentagon tried to freeze out the State Department by speaking at joint meetings entirely in acronyms that only Pentagon staff would understand. And of how Donald Rumsfeld weeded out from those going to help the reconstruction of Iraq anyone who could speak Arabic, on the grounds they would be pro-Arab. As a result, it took the Americans 18 months to realise that when marines held up the flat of their hand to oncoming cars to signal them to stop, they were actually using the Iraqi hand-signal for “come forward”. That’s why so many families in cars were shot.
January 29, 2010
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