Mission Improbable?

As I was driving across the Plains the other day, I heard a fascinating report on National Public Radio news about two Washington Post reporters who were embedded in Iraq on each side of some American troops who were working with and training their Iraqi counterparts. Here is the print version of their report, which nicely reveals the age-old difficulties of trying to train locals as a strategy of imperial rule...the condescension, the mutual misunderstanding, the farce of the whole endeavor.