2:05 Crocker is up now…… telling us how bad things were when Saddam was alive.

Here’s an Iraq Report Open Thread……. I’ll be watching it as much as I can.
All I can say about the beginning of the hearing…..a clusterfuck. Microphones that don’t work, hand outs that aren’t there. Ike Skeleton telling Ileana Ros-Lehtinen not to lecture him and her telling him she wasn’t. When she walks away he says the hell you weren’t. (his mike was working) The Betrayus is talking now. Telling us how the “violence” has been reduced since the surge. I’ll tell ya how they reduced the violence. By changing the way they report it. Did you know……..

The Los Angeles Times reports that people killed in car bombings don’t count.
The Washington Post reports that victims shot in the face don’t count.
The Center for Strategic and International Studies reports that Shi’a vs. Shi’a and Sunni vs. Sunni violence doesn’t count.

The reason the violence is down in Baghdad (if indeed it is) is because we’ve walled off neighborhoods and people are living, basically, like prisoners.