A couple of months after even Hillary Clinton understood it, the New York Times reports that the insurgency is losing in Iraq.

Joel Achenbach writes in tomorrow's Washington Post magazine (look, time travel!) A good read, a good look at the Vision. Exploration! We have optimists out there, and I like optimism!

I am back to blogging, though as Instapundit notes, the news is kinda slow lately. So I've been busy, busy, busy. I guess it shows how easy my last job was - had plenty of time to blog, even when, probably especially when, travelling. Plus I am taking 2 classes this term. But, hey, at least what I am studying is trendy! In addition to that, I am busy finishing a room in the basement - moving my office/computer room there. I have to do that for the real big thing happening - we are expecting a baby this fall, a little girl this time! So much to do.

Even still, I sometimes want to write about things, and sometimes, I think, other people want to read it. So I'm back - and hopefully with something worthwhile reading. Make sure you come back!

I generally do not speak ill of the dead. Even when Arafat died, I held my tongue. Largely because it seems ungracious to pile on in death what has gone on in life.

But with the passing of COL David Hackworth, I think there is a bit of correcting of the record to do. Hack, as he liked to be called, was not, the hero described in his Yahoo obit. He gets such accolades because of this part:

then as a writer, war correspondent and sharp-eyed critic of the Military Industrial Complex and ticket-punching generals he dismissed as Perfumed Princes.

The press loved him because he was a military man who criticized the military. And the right adopted him because he was a highly decorated soldier who was critical during the Clinton days - he must be one of us! Fox had him on as an analyst, too.

But Hackworth was a crook, and a fraud.

Worse yet, he was a central player in the Abu Ghraib scandal. No, he didn't hold the leash, but he was the conduit for SSG Chip Frederick's lawyers and family to explode the scandal onto the world stage in order to try to save his worthless hide. Frederick was on his way to a court martial well before the pictures hit our screens. The pictures went to Hackworth, whose wife was a CBS consultant, and then they ended up with Mary Mapes.

There is no question that those pictures being publicized hurt our reputation and hurt the war effort. And COL "Soldiers for the Truth" was a key part of that publicity.

May God have mercy on his soul.