US official:"One day, we remove the Al Qaeda patch and put on a CLC patch.Now they're the good guys"

[sabra]

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-usiraq14jan14,0,7596784.story?page=2&coll=la-home-center

<snip>

Mid-level U.S. officers acknowledge that many of the men being drafted into the CLC groups are former insurgents; one officer in east Baghdad marveled that he recently met over tea with CLC leaders who had been on his unit's insurgent target list just weeks earlier.

"Our 'concerned local citizens' -- people say it without any hint of irony," said one official. "One day, we remove the Al Qaeda patch and put on a CLC patch. Now they're the good guys."

But advocates of the program argue that such steps are inevitable, and in some cases desirable. They represent an acknowledgment that many Iraqis who were fighting U.S.-led forces were not hardened militants, but angry men looking to protect their neighborhoods from foreigners.

[pinto]

1. Sure seems as if we're going to put a 'new patch' on the civil war, declare victory,

retire to the Green Zone/Baghdad Embassy Fortress and get busy on another rewrite to the history of our occupation.

[Javaman]

2. You know what they say about polishing a turd...nt

[DLnyc]

3. Why did it take four and a half years to figure this out?

"They represent an acknowledgment that many Iraqis who were fighting U.S.-led forces were not hardened militants, but angry men looking to protect their neighborhoods from foreigners."

Noooooooooooo Shit!

[eridani]

4. That's what imperial mass murdering dominator sociopaths always do

They are on an endless search for cats' paws to stomp the commoners into the ground and rule on their behalf, and the stooges always turn out to have their own agendas. So they switch sides, and switch and switch again. We were always at war with Oceania. We were never at war with Eastasia.