Reported "breach" of the Green Zone--NOT

The recent attack on the Iraqi parliament this past week was trumpeted by much of the MSM as having been a breach of the "heavily fortified" Green Zone, and was a not-so-veiled jab at the security efforts of the American and MNF forces in Iraq.

Fine and dandy, but as Big Lizards points out, the reported "breach" in the Green Zone wasn't even in the Green Zone.

In yesterday's attack on the Iraqi parliamentary, extremists did not "penetrate... the Green Zone," for the simple reason that the parliament building is not in the Green Zone, and hasn't been since 2006 -- at lease according to a State Department official quoted in Black Five.

The Iraqis evidently decided that all the security measures we had implemented when we controlled that building were too intrusive; they didn't like being searched, so they ended the searches and other "intrusive" protections. That building was less secure than the county courthouses in Los Angeles. Surprise, surprise, the building was attacked!

This says nothing at all about the counterinsurgency strategy; the only thing it illustrates is Larry Niven's famous maxim: "Not responsible for advice not taken."

The article goes on to state many instances of the success, not failure of the counterinsurgency movement brought about by the "surge strategy" currently underway in Iraq.
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