Maybe the Embassy is afraid that the news will strengthen the case for rescuing our remaining Iraqi allies.

Many soldiers have a sense that even their Iraqi allies cannot be completely trusted.

This warning was passed on to the Kurdish and Iraqi allies.

There are, as the report points out, strategic benefits to protecting our Iraqi allies.

But not enough of our Iraqi allies have risen to the occasion, either.

Our staunch Iraqi allies, the Kurds, may now not be frozen out.

But there remain wide swaths of the city where the insurgents, not the Americans or their Iraqi allies, appear to have the upper hand.

The Bush administration and its Iraqi allies strongly opposed that step because it would have excluded the death penalty.

"They understand the security situation is lacking and working with our Iraqi allies; they understand the need to get it right," he said.

Nevertheless, their arrests removed any sense of urgency in the government agencies responsible for protecting our Iraqi allies.