Thelma Drake on Iraq: Up is down

I'll just let Gooding set the table for us:

The U.S. is more than three years into the Iraq war and the violence continues.

On Monday, a string of car bombs rocked Baghdad, killing 10 people and injuring nearly 80. Police also discovered the bodies of 28 people there and in the northern city of Mosul.

The U.S. military death toll is closing in on the 2,400 mark.

Despite all that, Rep. Thelma Drake (R-VA), who serves on the House Armed Services Committee, says things in Iraq are getting better.

"Security is much different.  It's much more relaxed than it was in October. We only wore our bullet proof vests and helmets on helicopters. We didn't have to wear them traveling about, or in and out of the country as we did in October," said Drake, who, along with three other members of Congress, spent time in Iraq last week and returned Tuesday.

They visited Balad and Baghdad, meeting with forces, contractors and Iraqi president Jalal Talabani.

Despite the bombings, kidnappings,  assasinations, and all, things are looking up in Iraq!  Must be so, because Thelma Drake only had to wear her body armor on the chopper!

In other news from Iraq:

The Iraqi capital's plague of violence continued Tuesday with at least three killings, including that of a judge, authorities said.

Ibrahim Malik al-Hindawi, chief judge of Karkh Civil Court, was killed by gunfire from another vehicle as he drove through western Baghdad's Amriya neighborhood.

Elsewhere in the city, a civilian was killed and four others injured when a minibus exploded in the Sadr City area.

In another bombing, two police were injured on patrol when a car bomb went off near Yarmouk Hospital, police said.

Earlier Tuesday, a pair of car bombs exploded, killing at least one person and wounding six others, police said.

Later Tuesday, gunmen kidnapped an engineer working at a power station in eastern Baghdad.

Memo to Thelma: Next time, wear your armor on the ground too.

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