HS Goes To Baghdad

....in the news. Bet some of you are crushingly disappointed.

Those who are are probably also disappointed by this story (via CQ)

Iraq is producing an average of 2.5 million barrels of oil a day, its highest level since the war began in 2003, an oil ministry spokesman said Wednesday.

Assem Jihad said 1.6 million barrels are being exported daily from the southern port of Basra, while 300,000 are being pumped from the northern city of Kirkuk to the Turkish port of Ceyhan.

The other 600,000 barrels produced daily are for domestic use, he said. ... Jihad also said new measures were being implemented and he was optimistic that the situation would improve.

"We hope to add 200,000 to 300,000 (barrels per day) before the end of this year," Jihad told the Associated Press, adding he also hoped to double the amount of oil pumped from Kirkuk to Ceyhan in that time period.

And this despite all the "sabotage and political chaos" the "insurgency" has thrown at it. It's gotta just fry the cut & run crowd how well the Iraqi economy is doing.

Yes, 2.5 million barrels a day is still a million less than in the last days of Saddam Hussein, but now it's ALL going for the benefit of the Iraqi people, not the corrupt, genocidal dictator and his despicable, corrupt Russian and European enablers. And the number can only go up from there.

A rather apt barometer of Iraqi fortunes in general.

~ ~ ~

Which, in turn, helps explain this particular discovery in a Shia firefight:

Iraqi and U.S. troops battled Shi'ite militiamen in a village northeast of Baghdad on Thursday, and witnesses and police said U.S. helicopters bombed orchards to flush out gunmen hiding there.

Iraqi security officials said Iranian fighters had been captured in the fighting, in which a sniper shot dead the commander of an Iraqi quick reaction force and two of his men. They did not say how the Iranians had been identified. ...

"We captured a number of militants and were surprised to see that some of them were Iranian fighters," the police intelligence captain said.

An Interior Ministry official, who did not want to be named, also said Iranian gunmen had been captured. Baquba lies 90 km (60 miles) from the Iranian border.

The United States and Britain have accused Shi'ite Iran of meddling in Iraq's affairs and providing military assistance to Iraq's pro-government Shi'ite militias. However, there have been few instances of Iranians actually being captured inside Iraq. [emphases added]

They weren't surprised, and the italicized passages of the above quote prove it. The most telling aspect, though, was this one Michael Ledeen pointed out:

The U.S. military had no immediate comment.

Of course they didn't, nor will they. To even acknowledge that more Iranian infiltrators have been found inside Iraq subverting the elected government, as well as picking up the slack for the decimated post-Zaraqawi al Qaeda, would be to publicly state that Iran is at war with both Iraq and the Coalition, which would demand a confrontation with Iran, which is anethema to the Bush Administration and the EUnuchs for whom Dubya has become lapdog.

Cap'n Ed is right: If we're not going to intervene pre-emptively to destroy the mullahgarchy and their budding nuclear weapons capability, why on Earth would we give a second glance to "penny-ante" stuff like this?

~ ~ ~

Our hostile readers will definitely not like this next item (via CQ):

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi had the phone numbers of senior Iraqi officials stored in his cell phone, according to an Iraqi legislator.

Waiel Abdul-Latif, a member of former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi's party, said Monday that authorities found the numbers after al-Zarqawi, leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, was killed in a U.S. air strike on June 7.

Abdul-Latif did not give names of the officials. But he said they included ministry employees and members of parliament.

He called for an investigation, saying Iraqis "cannot have one hand with the government and another with the terrorists."

The snuffing of "Emir" Zarqawi continues to pay abundant dividends. Not only did the wealth of intelligence gathered by the Coalition from his cathouse hideout roll up pretty much the entire al Qaeda network in Iraq, but now it has opened windows into the degree to which the Sunni branch of the "insurgency" has penetrated the elected government.

Have no doubts about this: the Iraqis know a lot better than we do what's really going on in and around their country. Those Sunni moles will not encounter a pleasant end, nor will the Iranian infiltrators mentioned above. Much like the Israelis, the Iraqis do not have the luxury of wallowing in appeasenik delusions about who their enemies are and what is necessary to defeat them. Unlike the Israelis as of late, the Iraqis will not indulge them; their newly won freedom is far to fresh for them to so cavalierly take for granted.