On Wednesday, Newsnight, in collaboration with the Guardian, showed a ten minute film from Iraq. From my time studying the U.S. military and particularly their approach to counter-insurgency (asymmetric warfare was what I mostly studied in my Honour year), this film is completely consistent with what I'm sure is happening all over Iraq. As pretty much any independent academic in this field will tell you, the U.S. military is particularly ill-suited to counter-insurgency operations. They simply are not trained to deal with the sort of situation they were always going to face in Iraq. The training they do receive concentrates almost exclusively on bringing overwhelming force to bear against a conventional military force. In many cases this means they are trained to act in ways which are in direct conflict with well accepted counter-insurgency doctrine.

An on the ground look at the activities of the 101st Division of the US army in Iraq, the film illustrates what's really going on out there as well as any report I've seen. It is now available to view on the Guardian website. I urge you to watch it and to encourage others to watch it too.

Tags: News, Politics, Iraq