The News You Want, Not the News You Have...

If this is accurate, then Bush has turned Rummy's admonition on its head. This means the commander in chief probably missed this one from Lt. Gen. James Helmly, commander of Reserve Forces. He wrote a memo in December--following up on a similar warning in November that recruitment goals weren't being met (hence, things like $15,000 dollar bonuses, which lend a whole new meaning to "your money or your life...or limb").

Helmly called the memo "a clear, distinctive signal of deepening concern" about the status of his force. It was not his first warning: In November, he told the House Armed Services Committee that the Army Reserve is falling behind its recruiting goals for the year.

No, I'm pretty sure Bush missed that one. And, if he HAS gone the route of self-imposed, not-in-the-loop on this, then he might also have missed this:

The bodies of 18 young Iraqi Shiites taken off a bus and executed last month while seeking work at a U.S. base have been found in a field near the volatile city of Mosul, police said Thursday...

Their hands were tied behind their back and each was shot in the head, police said. All of the men were Shiite Muslims from Baghdad's northern neighborhood of Kadhimiya who had been hired by an Iraqi contractor to work at a U.S. base in Mosul.

The bodies were discovered Wednesday, the same day a suicide attacker blew up an explosives-laden car outside a police academy south of Baghdad in Hillah during a graduation ceremony, killing 20 people.

A second car bomber killed five Iraqi policemen in Baqouba bringing the death toll to at least 90 so far this week in surging violence aimed at derailing this month's elections.

In a separate execution-style incident, the bodies of three Jordanian truck drivers shot in the head were discovered on the outskirts of Ramadi, 70 miles west of Baghdad, an AP photographer at the scene said Thursday. "This is the fate of anyone who cooperates with the Americans," said a note placed on one of the bodies.

Now, how the hell can 18 individuals be killed, execution style, without some sort of police response? Well, one answer is found later in the article:

More than 1,300 policemen were killed in the final four months of 2004, the Interior Ministry said Wednesday.

Without trying to sound vicious, police in Iraq--nominally our "allies," as Dick Cheney so adamently asserted during the vice-presidential debate--are easy targets. Now, in a stable, or even improving situation, you woudn't expect police to be killed in those kind of numbers. Consider what the response in this country would be if 1,300 police were killed in THIS country in four months. Actually, on a per capita basis, an equivalent total would be closer to 15,000. Something tells me we wouldn't be scheduling elections under those circumstances.

But Bush apparently doesn't hear any of this. Neither, I'm guessing, does he hear about stuff like this--eight Kuwaiti soldiers have been questioned, and two court martialed, for suspicion of conspiracy in plotting to attack American soldiers during joint exercises. And these are our friends...

No, Bush apparently doesn't hear any of this. Not this, not the latest ugliness emerging from Abu Gonzales Ghraib or Guantanamo, or anything else that might upset his breakfast. Instead, he probably hears about stuff like this from Major General Peter Chiarelli, who noted at his press conference yesterday:

Here you see about 18,000 folks that we currently have at work in Sadr City putting in new sewers, putting in new electrical lines, putting in new water mains, picking up the trash and establishing. The next picture shows you folks that are improving the electrical distribution.

I've got 18,000 folks that work in Sadr City, $161 million worth of projects. I've got similar projects going on in just about every district of Baghdad. And that's what's normally not reported every day. And I think it's having a tremendous effect that the Iraqi people here in Baghdad feel that they have hope for the future. And because of that, I expect them to go out in the polls in rather large numbers.

In fact, Sadr City is remarkably quiet right now, considering that just a few months ago it was the scene of vicious fighting, as well as a bizarre weapons buy-back program that apparently allowed Moqtada's Militia to pay for upgrades to their arsenal. Bush probably gets news like this all the time.

And, if you think about it, it IS good news, at least to the extent that at last, not quite one percent of the reconstruction funds allocated for reconstruction have begun to be spent. On the other hand, you've got to wonder just what the general actually means, especially in light of articles like this, which seem to note a great deal of confusion as to how much money is being spent, has been spent, or will be spent.

Then you've got to consider some details of the kind that I'm sure Mr. Bush has sternly directed to never disturb him with:

The candidate, Fatah al-Sheik, 37, is the leader of a newly formed slate that is competing in the national elections scheduled for Jan. 30. But what is unusual is that he and his running mates are all from the vast, impoverished Shiite neighborhood in Baghdad called Sadr City, and all are acolytes of Moktada al-Sadr, the young cleric whose stern visage glares down from nearly every wall.

Or this:

...firebrand Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's Mehdi Army has begun organizing fuel distribution in eastern Baghdad to ease the growing shortages. With fuel shortages and distribution problems now affecting people in almost every Iraqi city, inhabitants of the areas covered by the Mehdi Army have been widely appreciative of their efforts.

In other words, the money we're spending directly assists forces that were fighting against us just a short time ago. Forces that might turn to arms again if the election doesn't quite turn out as planned--hey, it's not like they haven't fought us before.

And there's always potential for fighting between say, Sadr supporters (and fellow travelers) and/or the Sunni insurgents (and THEIR fellow travelers) and/or the Kurdish nationalists. But that's just more news that Bush doesn't want to hear. But that doesn't mean it isn't news.

In the end, The Poor Man has a nice conclusion to his own latest post on the situation in Iraq--sorry to steal it, but it's as good as anything else I've seen:

no, I have no clue about how we can improve things in Iraq. I don’t have a single idea for how we can un-shit the bed, and I don’t hold out much hope that this whole bed-shitting episode is ever going to be brought to a lemony-fresh conclusion. I do, however, know who shit the bed, and have some sense of how frequently he shits there. Let’s stop shitting for a start.