George Packer’s dispatch relieves me of the need to deal with Paul Berman’s salvo. He makes the same point I would have, plus three or four others, all of them more elegantly. Let me follow up on a point George made with a question, aimed specifically at Paul and Christopher, but that anyone should feel free to pick up: What do you make of Jim Risen’s front-page story in today’s New York Times, reporting that, before he was captured (but after he went into hiding), Saddam Hussein wrote a directive to his insurgent-followers, urging them to stay away from the foreign jihadists who were coming in to battle the Americans and who, S.H. apparently emphasized, had incompatibly different goals and motives?
Why Was Saddam Anti-Jihad?
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