More good news from Iraq -- alas, not true

The news from Iraq just keeps getting better and better. When the US isn't paying to get good stories in the Iraqi press, it's just making stuff up. For example:

President Bush, in his speech at the Naval Academy:

This year in Tal Afar, it was a very different story.

The assault was primarily led by Iraqi security forces -- 11 Iraqi battalions, backed by five coalition battalions providing support. Many Iraqi units conducted their own anti-terrorist operations and controlled their own battle space -- hunting for enemy fighters and securing neighborhoods block-by-block. To consolidate their military success, Iraqi units stayed behind to help maintain law and order -- and reconstruction projects have been started to improve infrastructure and create jobs and provide hope.

CNN interview of Time magazine's Baghdad Bureau Chief Michael Ware, by Anderson Cooper.

COOPER: The president also said today that, in the battle of Tal Afar, the assault in the north of Iraq, that he said it was led primarily by Iraqi security forces, 11 Iraqi battalions, backed by five coalition battalions providing support.

WARE: With the greatest respect to the president, that's completely wrong and is extraordinarily misleading.

COOPER: How do you know that?

WARE: I was in that battle from the very beginning to the very end.

I was with Iraqi units, right there on the front line, as they were battling with al Qaeda. They were not leading. They were being led by the U.S. Green Beret special forces with them, Green Berets who were following an American plan of attack, who were advancing with these Iraqi units as and when they were told to do so by the American battle planners. The Iraqis led nothing.