I thought I heard an annoying buzz

Of someone proclaiming victory in Iraq.

That's so nice...and completely inaccurate:

Three American soldiers were killed in a rocket attack in southern Iraq on Wednesday, bringing to 12 the number of soldiers who have been killed in Iraq over the past three days.

With the overall U.S. military death toll in Iraq nearing 4,000, the latest killings mark a significant rise in deadly attacks against Americans.

At least 3,987 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an AP count. The figure includes eight military civilians

Oh, and once again, civilian deaths are spiking upward:

On pace for about 1,000 this month.

And, of course, this is a lovely story of the surges success in knocking down crime:

U.S. authorities in Baghdad have received five severed fingers belonging to four Americans and an Austrian who were taken hostage more than a year ago in Iraq, officials here said today.

And the Mahdi Army's truce is hanging by a thread:

Iraqi police raided strongholds of Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's Mehdi Army in the southern city of Kut on Wednesday after the militia broke a ceasefire and clashed with security forces a day earlier.

And John McCain's proclaimed victory over Al Qaeda in Iraq...missed it by that much again...

U.S. sees long fight to oust Al Qaeda in Mosul

Man, we've sure gotten our $3 Trillion's worth.

UPDATE:

And here's some even HAPPIER news!

The tide of the war in Afghanistan is running against the United States and its allies, in contrast to an improving trend in Iraq [ed: D'oh!], a U.S. military official and counter-insurgency expert said on Wednesday.

"Afghanistan (is) in my eyes an under-resourced war, a war that needs a whole lot more advisers, a whole lot more economic aid," Lieutenant Colonel John Nagl told a security conference in Stockholm.