The same week that Newsweek ran a harsh critique of the Pentagon's nascent efforts to send social scientists to work with the military in Iraq and Afghanistan, Defense Secretary Gates addressed the often touchy issue of cooperation between the Pentagon and academia, saying that human terrain teams' work "is still in its infancy and has attendant growing pains."

Also at the link are fantastic comments by Montgomery McFate (Well Done !)

FACTUAL ERRORS:

1) "the idea is to recruit academics whose area expertise and language skills" - Incorrect. In fact, the goal of HTS is to recruit social scientists with the appropriate research skills and methodological approaches. There are very, very few social scientists in the US who have the requisite knowledge of Iraq or Afghanistan, since these countries have been closed to research for many decades. However, if the social scientist on a team is not an Arabic speaker, other members of the team possess the requisite area expertise and language skills.
Much more at the links...