June 27, 2007 - Do the insurgents have the initiative in Iraq or does the U.S. military?

That important question came up at today's House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing which was examining whether the military surge in Iraq was working.

Major Gen. John Batiste (ret.) who commanded the Army's First Infantry Division in Iraq, and is a respected critic of the war, said the insurgents have the initiative since they can pick where and when to explode a truck bomb for instance.

But Frederick Kagan, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, rejected that view, saying that under the new strategy being executed by Gen. David Petraeus, the top commander in Iraq, the initiative was on the U.S. military's side.

Kagan also said because of the surge, if U.S. forces were playing whack-a-mole, they were playing it everywhere.

Batiste disagreed with Kagan on this.

It was one of those strange Washington moments where the military expert with real experience as a combatant commander in the battlespace at issue was being told he was wrong by an Inside-the-Beltway expert who likely never fired a weapon at anyone in anger.

To see video of General Batiste, go to this link: http://www.ktvb.com/news/localnews/stories/ktvbn-jun2607-gonzales.18f2c6a9.html