Packing Sand...

Iraqi Forces to control 75 percent of the country’s territory "Anthony Cordesman, a national security analyst with the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, believes the hand-over emphasis is “nonsense.” With almost the entire western half of Iraq virtually empty desert, "the figures vastly overestimate the actual area of influence and are at least as meaningless as the worst reporting on pacification in Vietnam," Cordesman wrote in a March 22 paper for CSIS. "The Iraqi forces don’t control anything like these areas, ignoring what 'control' of empty desert means."