RTK - my point was, and is, that whether you liked Sassaman as a person or not doesn't matter. Whether he was a nice guy or not is irrelevant. And yes - maybe his actions on that night in question (and subsequently) disgraced the Army. I'm not trying to restore Sassaman's reputation. I'm not trying to be buddies with him. I've never in my life met the man, and never expect to. I make no apologies for what he did. Read the last two paragraphs of what I wrote and you'll see that I agree with you that what he writes now in 2008 is not necessarily what he followed in 2003. And read the first paragraph of what I wrote and you'll see that I am fully aware that the point of memoirs are to blame everyone else for what happened.

Here's my point though - what he writes in 2008 might, in and of itself, have some value - not because it exculpates Sassaman, but because it is a reasonable analysis of what we've done wrong in Iraq. The fact that there have been some incredibly silly - and unproductive - attempts to "win hearts and minds" handed down by senior officers and policymakers at the expense of conducting sound COIN operations is in no way Sassaman-specific. The fact that we stunk at coordinating the real "hearts and minds" operations - again, oftentimes at the expense of sound COIN efforts is not something only Sassaman encountered. The argument that it is counterproductive to wed ourselves to the idea that only indigenous forces can conduct COIN - and if they don't exist, by god we'll create them out of thin air so we can hand over control to them - is not discounted because Sassaman disgraced himself. Finally, the argument that we were slow to combat the growing insurgency (or even admitting it was an insurgency) in 2003-2004, in part b/c we figured there was little that Americans could do about it, and we had to wait until the Iraqis were ready to fight it themselves, is still relevant, even if Sassaman is a POS.

There have been great strides made in COIN theory and practice since the early days of this war, but there still remains a great deal of conventional wisdom that often goes unchallenged. If you can get past personal experiences with Sassaman (of which I have none, and therefore cannot comment) then there is a great deal of valuable insight in this book - even if it is written with 2008 hindsight and was the complete opposite of everything Sassaman did while in Iraq.