Uplifting

Here's something Joe Lieberman ignores, the latest bit of progress:

It was one of the most brazen attacks on a government building in Baghdad. More than 40 men in police uniforms drove up in a convoy of 19 government-issued SUVs, to the technology and information directorate of the finance ministry. They sealed off the building, set up roadblocks outside it, walked into a hall where a British consultant was giving a lecture on computers, and shouted: "Where are the foreigners?" The consultant and his four British bodyguards were led away by a man in a police major's uniform, without a shot being fired.

The security guards at the compound either knew the abductors or were too frightened to challenge them. If coalition forces require any reminder about how deeply the Shia militias have infiltrated the Iraqi police, the latest abduction has rammed home the message. Iraq's foreign minister, Hoshyar Zebari, a Kurd, admitted yesterday that the interior ministry's police, security units and forces were "corrupt and penetrated". That is not how senior US officials have been talking recently, with claims that 135,000 Iraqi policemen have been trained. As what? Policemen or militia gunmen?

These sorts of stories have been out there for at least two-years now. We've been training less an Iraqi Army, than sectarian military squads [Under the initial watchful eye of John Negroponte so what a surprise, eh?]. Here, in the midst of "the Surge" where the full weight of the Surge has just hit, a brazen attack like this occurs, openly and without a hitch for the militia.

Pair this with the NY Times article of an American soldier observing a U.S. trained Iraqi soldier planting an I.E.D. in the road with the purpose of killing Americans and you get the full picture of the nightmare.