This operation really runs like a well-oiled machine, doesn't it.

Almost half of the 700 members of the first battalion of the new Iraqi army to undergo training have, in the Pentagon's words, 'resigned.'

(Reports last night said close to a third had bailed. But it seems like they're just putting a different spin on the same number: roughly 300 out of 700.)

I thought that when enlisted men hit the road without permission that's called desertion, not resignation. But who knows?