From the Economist: "AHMED HASHIM is well-placed to study the Iraqi insurgents and their opponents. An American of Turkish-Egyptian origin, he is a professor at the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island, and was an adviser to the American authorities following Saddam Hussein's fall, both in Baghdad and in hotbeds of violence such as Tel Afar, near the Syrian border. After many delays, his bleak appraisal comes out next month...Of the 600-800 Americans who ran Iraq for the first year of occupation, only 17 could speak Arabic, while the briefings he was given by Americans in authority were “amateurish, pathetic, shoddy and heavily politicised”." (Ahmed had told me that he was marginalized and excluded by the neo-cons around Bremer)