Wanat: It's back

The new issue of Vanity Fair has a good overview piece by Mark "Black Hawk Down"
Bowden about the
Wanat battle and its effect on those who fought it, oversaw it and
questioned it. Here's a link
to the article.

Meanwhile, Rand Corporation surfaces
with a report
on what Wanat might tell us about small unit operations in Afghanistan. I gave
it a skim and can't tell what, if anything, to make of it. I don't want to keep
on beating up on poor Rand, but I find their reports tend to be mushy. I read
so much stuff that I want people to get to their essential points clearly,
quickly and emphatically -- as Col. Creighton Abrams did in an Army War College
paper that I was reading yesterday in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. More on that
later.