NY Times has published an editorial by seven non-commissioned officers in Iraq, which is absolutely piercing in its insight:

...it is important not to assess security from an American-centered perspective. The ability of, say, American observers to safely walk down the streets of formerly violent towns is not a resounding indicator of security. What matters is the experience of the local citizenry and the future of our counterinsurgency. When we take this view, we see that a vast majority of Iraqis feel increasingly insecure and view us as an occupation force that has failed to produce normalcy after four years and is increasingly unlikely to do so as we continue to arm each warring side.

If you've been picking up even a fraction of the current yammering going on over the value of the Surge -- which is going to get a renewal sometime after Labor Day, I'd wager -- the contrast set by this piece couldn't be more stark. Not just in terms of opinion, but in specificity and linguistic clarity as well.

In my business, we'd call the likes of Kenneth Pollack and Bill Kristol "hand wavers." Salesman, essentially, as opposed to people who can actually write code. They understand a lot of things in theory, and they have a good jive, managing to sound credible to the uninitiated. But if you pay very close attention and/or know very much about the underlying issues, you can tell when someone is speaking from a place of direct and real experience, and when someone is speaking from a place of theoretical vision. More importantly, you can tell when they're feeding you a line of BS.