Go Cernig!

Over at The NewsHoggers , Cernig scored an email interview with Col. Steven Boylan, the press spokesman for Gen. Petraeus. Very interesting, if not terribly revealing. Col. Boylan does a lot of "talking points", which is to be expected, but reveals more by the questions he chose not to answer:

Newshoggers: Colonel, you wrote recently in comments at Newshoggers blog that ""Sadr is only one element of the issue. If he has in fact regained control of his militia, then all the better, but the numbers of events based soley on his militia was not the prime killer or reasons for the levels of attacks." Yet we are being told by the administration and by the White House military press officers dispatched to Iraq over the last year that Sadr's JAM are the major group "in league" with Iran. What you write suggests, then, that Iran is not a major motivator of attacks either. Would you agree that's the case? If Iran is meddling, but not in conjunction with Sadr but rather SCIRI and Dawa, then what does it say, that our allies in the Iraqi government are in league with Iran and attacking our forces?

Answer: [none given]

Newshoggers: Some independent experts have said that the U.S. military's claim that Iran is providing EFP's to Iraqi militias is entirely based on an assessment - that Iraqis cannot make EFP's themselves - that isn't warranted by the evidence. How does the United States military maintain its credibility in information operations when it has a public information warfare/public disinformation office --- notably the evolving EFP claims?

Answer: [none given]

http://cernigsnewshog.blogspot.com/

Understand that I'm not questioning Col. Boylan's honesty. His position as a spokesman requires that his comments reflect the administrations perspective. I do think it's a good thing that he would agree to be interviewed by a blogger as astute as Cernig.