Good news for the Iraqis

Sort of.

The WSJ tee-up probably says it all:

The U.S. military has cut the number of Iraqi civilians killed at U.S. checkpoints or shot by U.S. convoys to about one a week today from about seven a week in July, according to U.S. defense officials in Iraq.

The reduction in civilian casualties shows that months before the killing of 24 Iraqis in the western Iraqi town of Haditha came to light, the military was pushing to reduce the number of Iraqi civilians killed or wounded at the hands of U.S. forces. The drop since July, however, suggests that hundreds of Iraqi civilians were killed at U.S. checkpoints or on Iraqi highways during the first two years of the war.

So the good news is that we're not accidentally killing them at the rate we were accidentally killing them a year ago. Hard to understand why those ingrates aren't thrilled with our presence over there.

Let's read a little farther:

In contrast with the Haditha incident, where the killings are alleged to be intentional, checkpoint and convoy shootings are almost always the result of mistakes in which confused or disoriented Iraqi drivers don't respond to initial warnings from U.S. forces to slow down or back off, U.S. officials say. U.S. forces, worried about their own security and that of their colleagues, must make split-second decisions to fire warning shots or open fire.

Such shooting incidents -- or escalation-of-force incidents, as military officials call them -- result in civilian casualties in 12% of the cases. The numbers don't include civilians killed in raids resulting from bad intelligence or Iraqis killed in the crossfire of battles with insurgents.

It shows no disrepect to our troops to point out that the situation they're placed in is nearly out of control, and has been for some time. The disrespect is on the part of the people who sent them there without an honest reason and keep them there without a plan.

(Tip of the Kevlar helmet to Gary for this upbeat bit of news.)