Meanwhile back in Iraq.............

......the good news just keeps coming NOT.
Violence in Iraq Claims More Than 100 Lives in Past 3 Days

[B]AGHDAD, Iraq, May 1 - Insurgents used car bombs to attack a Kurdish funeral near Mosul and children playing next to an American military convoy in Baghdad while gunmen ambushed a squad of Iraqi police officers in the capital, killing at least 35 people today and wounding 80 more.

American and Iraqi officials hoped the formation of a new government last Thursday would dampen the insurgency and reassure Iraqis. Instead, insurgents have launched coordinated attacks that American officials describe as a clear effort to undermine and challenge the confidence and authority of the new government. Since Friday, more than 100 Iraqis have been killed and 200 more have been wounded.

Michael Schwartz in the Asia Times tells us that in spite of all the happy spin from Rumsfeld and the administration the Iraqi Security Forces, Army and police are a joke.

Optimistic reports that the United States' local military allies will soon begin to replace US troops follow a familiar pattern of miraculous overstatement (first established in Vietnam decades ago), as reporter Timothy Phelps documented in a March 21 article in Newsday that reviewed the history of US attempts to build Iraqi military forces. In the spring of 2004, official (and unofficial) Bush administration reports claimed the existence of 206,000 fully trained Iraqi troops. To the surprise of those who had accepted these claims, none of them fought successfully in the major battles that April (in Fallujah, Najaf or Sadr City). Most deserted beforehand, refused to fight, or fled under fire. A measurable minority, however, did fight ferociously - for the resistance, using US-supplied weapons and equipment.

By autumn 2004, though the US was publicly claiming 135,000 "combat-ready" Iraqi troops, one military official told New York Times reporter John Burns that as few as 1,500 Iraqi troops were actually fully trained. This was vividly demonstrated in the second battle of Fallujah, when only Kurdish militia units imported from the north fought successfully alongside the Americans. The official Iraqi army units resisted, either through mutiny or desertion, or by defecting to the other side. Kalev Sepp, a counterinsurgency expert at the Naval Postgraduate School, told Newsday's Phelps that the second battle of Fallujah was largely fought against Iraqis who had been "trained and equipped by Americans".

Then came Rear Admiral William Sullivan's report to Congress in spring 2005 that spoke of 145,000 "combat-capable", "new" Iraqi armed forces. This claim was disputed by - of all people - Sabah Hadhum, a spokesman for the Iraqi Ministry of the Interior. He told Telegraph reporter Anton La Guardia, "We are paying about 135,000 [members of the security services] but that does not necessarily mean that 135,000 are actually working." As many as 50,000 of these may actually be what he termed "ghost soldiers" - men not on duty but whose paychecks were being pocketed either by their officers or themselves.

Newsday's investigative report confirms Hadhum's negative assertion. Just under 40,000 of the reported 145,000 armed forces turn out to be holdovers from the old Iraqi National Guard. According to US Army experts, they had received the same "haphazard training" as their predecessors (who refused to fight) and could be relied upon to do nothing except receive their paychecks.

Another 55,000 were Iraqi police whose unwillingness to confront the guerrillas has become legendary. The deputy governor of Nineveh province - where the Iraqi "northern capital" Mosul is located - accused the 14,000 police there of being "in league" with the resistance. He assured reporter Patrick Cockburn of The Independent that his bodyguards "don't tell them our movements", since he suspects them of trying to assassinate him. Military expert Kalev Sepp told Newsday the US military had concluded that "70% of the police in Anwar province are insurgents or sympathizers", with substantial infiltration elsewhere as well. (According to Sepp, even "one infiltrator with access to intelligence" could give the enemy "forewarning", so imagine what a 20-70% infiltration rate might do.)

According to Rear Admiral Sullivan, only a meager 14,000 troops were fully trained units in the "new Iraqi army", the first beneficiaries of what Burns of the Times called a "$5 billion American-financed effort". These troops had not, however, yet endured a major battle, and some of the US troops who worked with them evidently considered them worthless. As one trooper told Times of London reporter Anthony Loyd, "I'm more scared of going out with these guys than clashing with the insurgents". According to Los Angeles Times reporter David Zuccino, even the 205th Iraqi Army Brigade, "considered the country's best unit by many US trainers", had been infiltrated by insurgents. And US Army Staff Sergeant Craig Patrick, one of the advisers in charge of training the Iraqis, told Washington Post reporter Steve Fainaru, "It's all about perception, to convince the American public that everything is going as planned and we're right on schedule to be out of here. I mean, they can [mislead] the American people, but they can't [mislead] us. These guys are not ready."

Yes, the good news just keeps coming from the quagmire in the sand. Mr Schwartz also tells us that the only way even the existing US troop levels can be maintained is by opening the window and letting a draft in.