More Brand Damage

clipped from hotair.com Echoing what Gen. Dempsey said the other day and what Michael Yon’s been saying for months. Baseball Crank had an interesting short post last night that’s worth tagging here. Lost in the endless jeremiads about quagmire is the fact that the United States isn’t the only player in all this that’s been taught some hard lessons. With the eyes of the world upon them, AQ had a chance to fashion itself as a champion of Muslims against the west; instead they did everything they could to destroy the brand, to the point where, I suspect, their abiding scumminess is one of the few issues on which you’d find huge consensus among Iraqis across sectarian lines. Cue Ryan Crocker: The U.S. ambassador to Iraq said Saturday that al-Qaida’s network in the country has never been closer to defeat, and he praised Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki for his moves to rein in Shiite and Sunni militant groups…