Iraqi troops dead

So 49 of the recently "trained" Iraqi forces were killed execution-style the other day. This gives me a lot of faith that their training was executed pretty well (sorry for the sarcasm there). But for real, the message that this has to send is that the insurgents are strong. Stronger than we may have thought, perhaps, and certainly stronger than the trained Iraqis.

I just read this article, which was a bit surprising to me. In it, Prime Minister Allawi blamed the US-led coalition for the massacre. I'd thought that Allawi would hesitate to be so critical of the US, but he certainly hasn't been. More than showing some nuance to the Prime Minister's position, though, I think that this shows that we can't go on deluding ourselves anymore. The situation in Iraq is far from sunny, as the conservatives would seem to like to claim (just turn on FOX News sometime, and they'll tell you about how the media overrepresents the bad things that happen). I've thought that for a long time, but part of Bush's claim was that Iraqi forces were being trained to take over for the coalition forces. This makes that argument moot, in my humble opinion, since these Iraqi forces were hardly effective in stopping the insurgents.

It frustrates me just a little bit that I'm making an argument that amounts to "things aren't as great in Iraq as they say." It's ridiculous for me just to type that, but Bush keeps saying that "freedom is on the march," talking about how good things are for the Iraqis now, so this kind of stuff has got to be brought up.

Anyway, that's all I've got for now.

Fargus...