When even our closest ally is telling us that things are going terribly, I'd say that's a minor hint that things are really going terribly. Here we have warnings to Tony Blair that the US was mishandling the war. Now, really, I'm pretty sure none of us needed any reaffirmation of this fact, but it's especially interesting to hear that the country we pretty much point to as proof that there's any kind of meaningful support was rumbling of, basically, incompetence. Describing [retired general Jay] Garner's outfit, he wrote: "No leadership, no strategy, no coordination, no structure and inaccessible to ordinary Iraqis." The forthcoming arrival of Paul Bremer, the U.S. diplomat who replaced Garner, was "not a day too soon," he added. I'd say that's a pretty fair way of putting things. Though the real doozie's here: Phase IV [the post-war nation-building stage] "did not work well" because the focus of U.S. planners had been on the invasion, he wrote. "There was a blind faith that Phase IV would work. There was a failure to anticipate the extent of the backlash or mood of Iraqi society." Now I don't know about that part. I can't really think of anyone who would blindly have thought that we would be greeted as liberators in Iraq. That's a pretty optimistic way of looking at things. Who in the world would have... Oh, right. Forgot about that guy. What's really nice is that while everything coming in from other areas is talking about problems over there, be they potential or realized, American intelligence refuses to acknowledge them. We had Bush telling us Saddam had WMDs and helped al Qaeda with 9/11, Rummy telling us Saddam was an "imminent threat" to the US, our Veep assuring us that we'd be greeted with open arms as liberators, Administrator of the US Agency for International Development Andrew Natsios assuring us that $1.7 billion in taxpayer money for the war was a high estimate, and Gen Casey reminding us that the civil strife was over. Hard to believe how completely wrong everything we were told was. Oh, speaking of the violence in Iraq, it seems that around 87 more bodies were found in the past 24 hours. A few mass graves, some stuffed in buses, that's a body count of around 25% of what the media kept trying to push across as the total count. Interestingly, I mentioned a little while ago that body counts were being suppresed by Shiites, and it didn't seem to get picked up. As I wrote there: It seems now I have my answer: Shiite officials are suppressing execution-style death tolls, so the only "official" numbers are coming in the form of explosions and in-the-street violence. What do you know, almost a week later we find stockpiles of bodies killed in that exact manner. I'd keep an eye on this one, folks, I heavily doubt this is the end of discovering bodies out there. There are more, possibly many more. It's going to really bring to light what's happening with the forming government. I can only imagine how Bush could possibly respond upon finding that the government he's championed putting into the country may be executing people and hiding the bodies. Can his little mind possibly comprehend the elected government hating democracy? I doubt it, myself. Personally, I think we do need to "cut and run" now. Dangerous place, and they need to sort out their own affairs. Like I said, we aren't police, we've made them a non-threat to the United States, time to go.