Hi, My Name Is Nancy

And I'm here to help:

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki told Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Ca., visiting Baghdad on Friday in her new capacity as House speaker, that he would like to see 50,000 U.S. troops leave by the end of the year, Iraqi officials said.

Pelosi’s primary concern in meeting Maliki appeared to be to determine how soon he thought the U.S. could withdraw its soldiers from Iraq, said Ali al-Dabbagh, the prime minister’s spokesman.

Pelosi – a critic of the Bush administration’s policy in Iraq – told the prime minister that she and fellow Democrats are eager to see a prompt transition of authority, the prime minister’s office said in a statement.

“The prime minister assured them that they could speed up the withdrawal of the troops if the equipment and training of the national forces could be speeded up,” Dabbagh said Friday night in an interview.

The same article has news of a disturbing new trend in Iraq which shows just how badly the USA is already losing: US soldiers are being execcuted through the back of the head.

The U.S. military, reversing earlier statements, acknowledged Friday that four of five soldiers killed Jan. 20 had first been abducted before being executed. The abductions followed a brazen attack on a government building in the southern city of Karbala.

The military’s statement Friday, issued following the release of an Associated Press story on the attack, provides this account of the Karbala killings:

The assailants traveled in at least five sport utility vehicles and wore what looked like U.S. military uniforms, which allowed them to approach the building without raising suspicion. The militants, who were armed with U.S.-type weapons, attacked a group of American soldiers inside with grenades and rifles. One U.S. soldier was killed.

The assailants captured four others. Several miles away, the convoy drew the suspicion of Iraqi police at a checkpoint, who followed the vehicles. The pursuit prompted the attackers to abandon five sport utility vehicles before they escaped.

Iraqi police found the bodies of two American soldiers handcuffed together in the back of one of the trucks; both had been shot in the head. Another soldier, also shot, was found dead on the ground. A fourth soldier, who also had been shot in the head, died en route to a hospital.

(PS: The military lied about the whole episode).

The same fate befell the crew of a US Blackhawk helicopter recently: they survived the crash but were found with bullets to the back of the head. How long before they are found with electric drill holes in their knees and craniums, like so many other Iraqi corpses?