Iraq News Update, pt. ?

I know...our little blog has descended into all-Iraq, all-the-time. There's just so much being written about Iraq on the left and the right, that it's impossible to address even the 10% of commentary worth talking about. I could spend all day doing this and not get to all of the note-worthy ideas floating around out there. So today I'm going to cut myself some slack and limit myself to this little round-up. That being said, there are still a few things I'd like to point out as worthwhile reading. In this morning's Washington Post we have a story about a report being published by a commission of retired military officers, that concludes that the Iraqi army will be unable to assume responsibility for Iraq's internal security anytime soon, and recommends the disbanding and reconstitution of the Iraqi police forces as they are "riddled with sectarianism and corruption." The commission goes on to recommend a change in strategy similar to the one being put forth by Democrats and other war opponents. It's hard to believe that the authors of the report genuinely believe that the police forces-dominated as they are by Shiite militias representing sectarian interests-will be dismantled anytime soon. Perhaps their recommendation is intended to allow one to draw one's own conclusions about the success of the present mission in Iraq.

Also we have in the Post an article wherein experts question the military's cherry-picking of numbers in an effort to show that the surge is succeeding.

The British are leaving Basra. British soldiers describe their feelings on the matter.

Bremer rallies to his own defense again, arguing in the NY Times that it wasn't his decision to disband the Iraqi Army and anyway, it was the right decision to make at the time. He might be sorta right about the first, but he's wrong about the second.

In Salon, Sydney Blumenthal writes that two fomer high-level CIA officers have told him that former CIA Director George Tenet told President Bush in September of 2002 that secret intelligence indicated that Iraq had no significant WMDs. This was according to the reports of Naji Sabri,
Saddam's foreign minister. According to these officials, this intelligence was never shared with Colin Powell, CIA analysts working on the WMD claims, or senior military officials planning the invasion of Iraq. Nor was the intelligence included in the National Intelligence Estimate, published only a month later, which concluded that Iraq had WMDs. This article only shows to demonstrate how to the closed mind, evidence that contradicts prior belief can be easily dismissed, however persuasive it might be to a more rational thinker. And our President cannot in any sense be considered a rational thinker.