The Armchair Analyst David L. Phillips renders a tendentious and false verdict on Iraq.

The Wall Street Journal ^ | May 10, 2005 | ROBERT L. POLLOCK

[rightalien]

A persistent theme of some critics of the Iraq war--again ascendant during the past few weeks of violence--has been the Bush administration's alleged failure to appease the Baath Party and other elements of Saddam Hussein's former regime. One of the more visible exponents of this point of view has been David L. Phillips of the Council on Foreign Relations. But his "Losing Iraq" reveals just how hollow and wrongheaded the critique really is.

The book supposedly offers a perspective from, as the subtitle has it, "Inside the Postwar Reconstruction Fiasco." Yet Mr. Phillips's "inside" experience seems confined to trips to Iraqi Kurdistan and to his work as a consultant to the State Department, for which he arranged conferences of Iraqi exiles before the war. Shockingly, he has not--as he and his publicist effectively conceded after several invitations to correct me on this point--actually set foot anywhere on Iraqi soil during the reconstruction he proclaims a "fiasco." What's more, he has never in his life set foot in Baghdad, the Sunni Triangle or Shiite southern Iraq.

Even a week's worth of firsthand impressions would have made for a far more reliable book. Granted, Mr. Phillips comes to his subject with more venom than fair-mindedness: In all seriousness he compares the Bush administration's "jihadist vocabulary" to Osama bin Laden's. Still, just a little contact with actual Iraqis might have prevented such silly lines as: "The first days of liberation were an unmitigated disaster."

[Bahbah]

In one passage, he notes the precise time ("10:26 A.M.") when Mr. Bremer rose from a "gilded" sofa to hand Interim Prime Minister Allawi a "leatherbound" note. Another passage describes Fallujah as "a twisted mix of narrow streets, back alleys and boulevards." A data-base search elicits the source of these adjectives: the New York Times.

LOL. Busted...not that it will make any difference. He'll appear on all of the lefty talk shows as an "expert" of post-war Iraq.

[Da Bilge Troll]

LOL!

[6SJ7]

... he (David L. Phillips) has never in his life set foot in Baghdad, the Sunni Triangle or Shiite southern Iraq.

"Losing Iraq"? Phillips never found it.