I got a different impression. See: Iraq occupation. One of the reasons why the whole thing went pear shaped was that the US military and diplomats underestimated the need for foreign language skills. Why learn foreign languages when you just have to shout english loud enough …
There are 1,100 employees in the U.S. embassy in Iraq, all living in the middle of a war among and against Arabic-speaking enemies.
Of those embassy employees, the Iraq Study Group found that only six speak fluent Arabic.
“It is not an accident that three-and-a-half years into the war in Iraq, we really don’t know who the enemy is,” said Fareed Zakaria, editor of Newsweek International and an ABC News analyst. “We don’t know anything about the insurgency. We know very little about the Shia death squads. We’re really operating in the dark.”
