How Much More Handholding?

By Spencer Ackerman
08/18/2008, 11:15AM Hard as it can be to keep up with the latest Iraq predictions, there's been an effort for the past several months to portray the Iraqi Army as increasingly competent and self-reliant. This, of course, has a long pedigree, as every single year -- stretching back to Donald Rumsfeld in September 2003 -- we're told that the Iraqi security forces are getting better and better, but if we withdraw from Iraq the Iraqi security forces will... fall apart. That makes it impossible to give face-value credence to the claims of improvement in the Iraqi army and police, but just because it's an expedient argument for the warmongers, doesn't automatically make it a lie.