According to this KR scoop, as much as $1 billion dollars intended for Iraqi military procurement may be been misspent by the Iraqi Defense Ministry.

Iraqi investigators have uncovered widespread fraud and waste in more than $1 billion worth of weapons deals arranged by middlemen who reneged or took huge kickbacks on contracts to arm Iraq's fledgling military, according to a confidential report and interviews with U.S. and Iraqi officials.

Ok, I'll admit it.  Sometimes, when my blood pressure gets too low, just for fun I read one of Ann Coulter's columns. 

And today, she has another nonsensical tirade.  Here's the last paragraph:

But you will notice, the jihadists are not pouring across the Syrian border to, say, Brooklyn Heights. They are running to Iraq, where they run smack dab into the glorious U.S. military.

She's right, it is the glorious U.S. military.  But are they going to be there forever?  Because when those jihadists run across and find Iraqi security forces, things turn out quite differently.

I've been following with great interest the story of Cindy Sheehan as she digs in at "Camp Casey" near the Bush Ranch in Crawford, TX, hoping the President will meet with her. Sheehan's son Casey was killed in Iraq, and she actually did meet with the President in June with about 15 other families and found the experience to be pretty impersonal and platitude-filled.

 When I heard the story, I could not help but recall the Harry Truman tale of how, after Truman's death, the library staff was going through his desk and found a purple heart and an angry note Mr. and Mrs. William Banning of New Canaan, CT which read:

Last week, I predicted that the neo-cons would be coming unhinged over some of Defense Secretary Rumsfeld's recent rhetoric.

Well, it didn't take Bill Kristol long:

The president knows we have to win this war. If some of his subordinates are trying to find ways to escape from it, he needs to assert control over them, overrule them, or replace them. Having corrected the silly effort by some of his advisers to say the war on terror is not fundamentally a war, he now has to deal with the more serious effort, emanating primarily from the civilian leadership in the Pentagon, to find an excuse not to pursue victory in Iraq. For if Iraq is the central front in the war on terror, we need to win there. And to win, the president needs a defense secretary who is willing to fight, and able to win.

President Bush seemed quite troubled when some in his administration shifted their rhetoric  from "war on terror" to "GSAVE." 

The NYT reported that the President worried that the change in language might be interpreted as a change in policy.  Apparently, he wanted to clarify that there was no shift, so he gave a speech using the word "war" over a dozen times in a 47 minute speech on domestic policy.

So, it makes you wonder what he'll do about this.  There's no easy way to say it.  Rummy's lost his mojo.  But don't take my word for it.  See for yourself. 

Hmmmm....here's a thought Mr. President.  Instead of engaging in public disputes with your Secretary of Defense over language, why don't you get enough troops in the right places in Iraq to prevent tragedies like the ones in Haditha this week?

From Slate's Today's Papers:

Though TP doesn't see it mentioned, U.S. commanders in the region have complained they don't have enough troops and end up sweeping towns only to be replaced by guerrillas. "We require more manpower to cover this area the way we need to," one military official told the LAT in May.

If you need a reminder that war is a grisly business, this story from the WP should do the trick:

Iraqi Maj. Gen. Abed Hamed Mowhoush was being stubborn with his American captors, and a series of intense beatings and creative interrogation tactics were not enough to break his will. On the morning of Nov. 26, 2003, a U.S. Army interrogator and a military guard grabbed a green sleeping bag, stuffed Mowhoush inside, wrapped him in an electrical cord, laid him on the floor and began to go to work. Again.