Two or three Friedmans away from...VICTORY!

But if you think we're leaving Iraq anytime soon, forget it.

"I don't have a date, but I can see over the next 12 to 18 months, the Iraqi security forces progressing to a point where they can take on the security responsibilities for the country, with very little coalition support," Gen. George Casey said in Baghdad.

That takeover would not mean U.S. troops leaving immediately. It is part of a U.S. military plan to hand over responsibilities, move into large bases and provide support while Iraqis take the lead. A U.S. drawdown would start after that occurred.

I don't think those "large bases" will permit too great a drawdown, unless they are simply Iraq headquarters for Haliburton.

But maybe Casey's right. After all after two or three more Friedmans, Iraq may simply run out of people to have die.

In Baghdad, at least 27 people were killed or found dead Tuesday.

In the Turath neighborhood, the police found the bodies of 11 people behind a school, an Interior Ministry official said. All the victims had been handcuffed and shot in the head, the official said, and their bodies showed signs of torture.

A mortar attack after nightfall killed four people and hurt six others, an official at Yarmouk Hospital here said. The police found another 12 bodies in other parts of the capital, the Interior Ministry official said.

In Baquba, a religiously mixed city northeast of Baghdad that has turned into a daily battleground between Sunni and Shiite Arabs, gunmen killed 11 people on Tuesday, a local police official said. Sunni gunmen killed two of Mr. Sadr’s militiamen during an attack on his provincial office, the official said.

Police officers also found the blindfolded bodies of two people in Buhruz, southwest of Baquba.

An American soldier died Tuesday afternoon when his vehicle was struck by a roadside bomb southwest of Baghdad, the military said.

Three other servicemen, the military said, also died on Monday: a marine with Regimental Combat Team 7, from injuries sustained in combat in Anbar Province on Monday; a Nebraska National Guard soldier from injuries suffered when his vehicle rolled over into a canal near Balad on Aug. 21; a soldier with the First Brigade, First Armored Division, from nonhostile causes; and a marine from Regimental Combat Team 5 from combat wounds suffered Monday.

Fortunately, though, Abu Gonzalez is on hand to tutor the Iraqis on detainee policies.

Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales met Mr. Salih on Tuesday in Baghdad and discussed the tactics used by Iraqi security forces to combat a wave of violence. He condemned the use of torture.

Mr. Gonzales has found himself on the defensive in the United States regarding torture. As White House counsel, he oversaw the production of legal memorandums that appeared to condone mistreatment, perhaps even torture, of detainees.

At his confirmation hearings in January 2005, critics said he was at the forefront of an effort to find legal rationales for subjecting detainees to coercive practices, putting him on the wrong side of history and in opposition to longstanding American principles.

In 2002, he sought clarification from the Justice Department as to the legal limits on the force that could be used on terrorist suspects in captivity. His query led to a much-disputed memorandum from the department that said torture could be said to occur only when the subject was in imminent danger of organ failure and that Mr. Bush as president could sanction coercive interrogation techniques in the name of national security. That definition was eventually renounced.