Ya think?!

From the LA Times:

BAGHDAD — The top U.S. envoy to Iraq said Monday that the 2003 toppling of Saddam Hussein's regime had opened a "Pandora's box" of volatile ethnic and sectarian tensions that could engulf the region in all-out war...

How sad that the mere admission of this by a member of the administration rates a headline in the LA Times. Almost as sad as the fact that "we told you so."

In remarks that were among the frankest and bleakest public assessments of the Iraq situation by a high-level American official, U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad said the "potential is there" for sectarian violence to become full-blown civil war.

Someone might want to tell that to General Pace, who was on Meet the Press Sunday:

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

GEN. PACE: I’d say they’re going well. I wouldn’t put a great big smiley face on it, but I would say they’re going very, very well from everything you look at, whether it be on the political side where they’ve had three elections, they’ve written their own constitution, they’re forming their government. 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. No matter where you look at their military, their police, their society, things are much better this year than they were last.

General Pace seems to have trouble keeping up with the news.

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- 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, the Pentagon said Friday.

Let's not even talk about the way we've built up the Iraqi forces using primarily Kurdish and Shiite militia men, which only fuels the tension with the Sunnis. As if there weren't already ethnic and sectarian tensions enough. I guess they thought that, if you're going to open Pandora's box, you might as well give it a good shake.