The U.S military in Iraq gets into the friendly season`s spirit

Major holiday´s has always been a time for the benevolent leader in the Arab World to show mercy, and generosity, that means that every time their is a big day coming up there is also some prisoners getting out.

This of course, has been the case off and on at Thanksgiving at the White house since Lincoln, but then only in form of pardoning a turkey.

Now it seems that the American army has learned something from their allies in the region, they announced that they together with the Iraqi authorities will free around 50 to 80 prisoners/day during the lunar month of Ramadan, starting today. No one of the released prisoners will pose a security threat.

A big thank you to President Bush, General Petreaus and the commander of the prisoner operations task force Major General Douglas Stone!

Bush, benchmarks and badgers

The NSC interim report on the new way forward in Iraq , the surge, the war that ended four years and two months ago and what have you was released today (25 pages PDF), and the President held a speech on Iraq(full transcript). Who could have foreseen that this news would be overshadowed by an army of ugly big fellows that seems to terrorize Basra these days.. And surprise surprise, it´s not the Mahdi Army!

On a whole a hellish period for the administration with important Republican senators like Richard Lugar et al leaving the sinking ship. The House of Representatives voting for troop withdrawal by April 2008, more American soldiers killed and several major car bombs during the last week, not much to be happy about.....

But there was actually a good piece of news, the amount of Iraqi casualties has been going down, and if that´s a continuing trend, then that might actually be the best news yet.....

I´m tired and on my way to bed, just wanted to post the interim report and the speech, and then you can judge for yourself.