Hey, how's that defining moment going?

Analysis: Iraqis' Basra fight not going well

Oh. Um.

A closely held U.S. military intelligence analysis of the fighting in Basra shows that Iraqi security forces control less than a quarter of the city, according to officials in both the United States and Iraq, and Basra's police units are deeply infiltrated by members of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's Mehdi Army.

"This is going to go on for a while," one U.S. military official said.

No pshitt, PSherlock.

"It was [al-Maliki's] military planning; it was his causing the troops to go from point A to point B," Bush said. "And it's exactly what a lot of folks here in America were wondering whether or not Iraq would even be able to do it in the first place. And it's happening."

So, um, in Bush's fevered little mind it's the ordering of troops to do something that shows leadership - not so much ordering them to do something they can. like, you know, do.

And it seems that the feared Iraqi Army can take on the enemies of the country just fine by themselves, when backed up by American fighters and attack helicopters and American armor units:

BAGHDAD, March 27 -- U.S. forces in armored vehicles battled Mahdi Army fighters Thursday in Sadr City, the vast Shiite stronghold in eastern Baghdad, as an offensive to quell party-backed militias entered its third day. Iraqi army and police units appeared to be largely holding to the outskirts of the area as American troops took the lead in the fighting.