reality-based educator

I dunno, but it sounds like the Bush administration doesn't want to admit that part of their Baghdad security plan was to subdivide Baghdad into gated communities of Sunnis and Shiites. Oh, well, either way, they say they're backing away from the plan anyway. Here's the analysis from the Times:

BAGHDAD, April 23 — American and Iraqi officials appeared today to be moving away from a plan to build a wall around a mostly Sunni neighborhood here.

...

On Sunday, the spokesman for the American military in Iraq sought to allay criticism of the project and explain its intent by saying that it was meant to be only a temporary barrier to improve security.

The military does not have a new strategy of building walls or creating “gated communities,” the spokesman, Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV, said in a written statement. He described it as a tactic being used in only a handful of neighborhoods and not an effort to divide the city, much less the country.

However, American military officials said last week in a statement that the Adhamiya wall was “one of the centerpieces of a new strategy.” They also said that the wall was aimed at separating Sunni Arabs in Adhamiya from Shiites to the east.

It's this sort of backtracking and hemming and hawing from the people in charge that gives us all so much confidence in the future of the occupation.

Hell, either admit to what you were doing and continue on with it or admit to it and say "Oh, now that we see the Iraqi people are not in favor of it, we'll cease and desist."

But not these guys. Instead they say "Walls? What walls? They're not the 'centerpiece' of our plan at all!"

Uh, huh.