I know, I know, hard to believe that the Bush Administration might lie to us again, but:

In Hilla, the largest town in the central Iraqi province of Babil, soldiers and residents say the violence was fiercest on March 25. And at least one American soldier said he was angry that the role of Iraqi troops was exaggerated after the battle. "A gunfight broke out and we were fighting [the Mahdi Army] for about four hours," the soldier told TIME. "The army article made it sound like we were just there supporting the Iraqi Army, but we did all the work. We just had four humvees out there with some Iraqi [troops]."

Another soldier at Forward Operating Base Kalsu in north Babil said he has little confidence in the battle abilities of the Iraqi forces. "Sometimes they start shooting because they heard or saw something, but then there's nothing there," he said.

How many billions have we spent on this training?

Training the Iraqi troops was David Petraeus' former job.

Now, however, 18 months after entering Iraq, I see tangible progress. Iraqi security elements are being rebuilt from the ground up.
- David Petraeus, Washington Post, September 26, 2004

Thank you well-time piece of pre-election psyops. How's that 4th star look on ya'?

So to sum up, 40 months later, surely What General Petraeus saw has become even more awesome?

Lack of professionalism is only one of the problems plaguing Iraq's floundering forces. More troublesome is their heavily sectarian composition. Throughout southern Iraq, members of the police and army are pulled largely from the Badr Brigade — a militia tied to a Shi'ite political party, the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, which is the chief rival of Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army. A number of MPs in Baghdad even suspect that Maliki's Basra assault was a poorly disguised government campaign to wipe out Sadr's base of popularity before local elections in October.

"Unpossible" says Fred Kagan.

Here's a suggestion. How about we keep treating them as infants so as to make them completely dependent on us, because they know we'll always be there to do the work for them in a pinch...or even just because they overslept?

Oh, good plan!

Some U.S. troop commanders also foresee an indefinite dependence.

Given the past track record, that shouldn't cost too much. A trillion here, a trillion there, pretty soon that's real Chinese money.

By the way, three more American kids down while we prevent Iraqi's from standing up.