NYT's preeminent expert on Iraq, who says he spent most of the summer there, said on MTP today that we are not arming Sunnis.
From the transcript:
MR. MICHAEL GORDON: Well, I spent most of the summer in Iraq in Diyala province and then south of Baghdad, and really a lot has changed on the security front in Iraq. And there’s been a very important development which has been the enabling of the Sunni tribes and some of the former insurgents. This is not just in Anbar. And there’s a very delicate political game under way right now to try to find a way to connect these disparate Sunni groups who are working with the American military, with the Maliki government, and that’s a work in progress. It’s really just in the early phases.
MR. RUSSERT: If we, in fact, are arming the Sunnis and we’ve already armed the Shiites, are we arming both factions in a civil war?
MR. GORDON: Well, we’re not arming these groups. They’re not being given arms by the Americans, but you’re pointing to one of the very real risks. I mean, the potential here is by organizing these Sunni groups in Baquba and...(unintelligible)...and...(unintelligible)...and all sorts of places in Iraq, we do have a mechanism to provide local security and really to drive out al-Qaeda of Iraq. The downside is unless this becomes institutionalized and these people become either Iraqi police or somehow approved by the Iraqi government, we might be setting the stage for more intensified civil war.
Maybe he should tell his colleague, John Burns:
BAGHDAD, June 10 — With the four-month-old increase in American troops showing only modest success in curbing insurgent attacks, American commanders are turning to another strategy that they acknowledge is fraught with risk: arming Sunni Arab groups that have promised to fight militants linked with Al Qaeda who have been their allies in the past.
So, do you think he just misspoke, was this something that has stopped, is he doing his usual spinning for the Bushies, or is he totally confused?