That Anything Can Happen Spirit

When asked about the situation in Iraq, General George Casey stumbled upon a sister phrase to the titular expression of this blog. When asked, "Is the country close to civil war, or could it fall into civil war?" a dour Casey opined, with the requisite vagueness that marks so many of the Bush administration's pronouncements about Iraq, that

Anything can happen.

Talk about leaving all the options on the table. And, without much delay, one of those anythings did happen:

A senior Iraqi general who commanded the Iraqi Army division in Baghdad was gunned down by insurgents today, the U.S. military said.Maj. Gen. Mubdar Hatim Hazya al-Dulaimi was killed when snipers fired at his convoy from houses alongside a highway at 4:35 p.m.

According to reports, Mubda was in charge of the Iraq forces division that was assuming control of Baghdad from US forces. This assassination can only cause distress within both the Iraqi Army and US forces.

Just the day before the assassination of the Iraqi general, Joint Chiefs chairman Peter Pace, when asked

If you were to be asked whether things in Iraq are going well or badly, what would you say? How would you answer?

Pace came up with,

I would say they’re going very, very well....

Even more bizarrely, and in contrast to a large body of evidence that sectarian militias are dominating Iraqi forces, Pace continued to indicate that the Iraqi forces are looking just super:

You look at the military side where this time last year there were just a handful of battalions in the field, Iraqi battalions in the field. Now there are over 100 battalions in the field. They had no brigades—that’s about 3,000 men each. Now they’ve got about 31 brigades.

This after a report had come out indicating that the only Iraqi brigade capable of fighting on its own was no longer able to do that:

The only Iraqi battalion capable of fighting without U.S. support has been downgraded to a level requiring them to fight with American troops backing them up.

Insurgents are assassinating Iraqi generals and zero Iraqi forces are rating as being able to fight on their own. I can hardly wait to hear how well things will be going tomorrow in the land where anything can and will happen.