Joe Biden's Impeccable Timing

While his boss was busy being publicly fellated by the yentas of The View, his bumbling sidekick was busy pretending to care about the troops today, with predictable results.

Vice President Joe Biden said in an interview aired Thursday he would bet "everything" that there would be no explosion of sectarian violence when US combat troops leave Iraq next month.

Biden, in an interview recorded Wednesday as he welcomed home one of America's most combat-tested brigades from Baghdad, said he could not "guarantee" anything but believed that serious violence was unlikely.

"I'm willing to bet everything that there will be no such explosion," Biden said in an interview with the NBC "Today" show.

Well, how'd that work out?

Insurgents briefly raised the black flag of Al Qaeda in Iraq over a mostly Sunni neighborhood of Baghdad on Thursday during a brazen assault that killed 16 people and laid bare Iraq's fragility as the withdrawal of U.S. troops accelerates and the country's political crisis deepens.

Ten of the dead were from the security forces, four were members of the U.S.-allied Sunni militia Awakening, and two were civilians, according to the Ministry of Interior. In addition, at least 14 people were injured, and police said the casualty toll could rise as sporadic clashes between security forces and gunmen continued into the night.

The deaths of the seven soldiers and three policemen in Baghdad brought to 17 the total number of Iraqi security forces killed in incidents nationwide Thursday, underscoring the vulnerability of the security forces as U.S. troops are in the process of drawing down to a total of 50,000 by the end of August. Two Iraqi soldiers died in car bombings in Fallouja, four were killed in a suicide bombing north of Tikrit, and a policeman was shot dead in Mosul.

Oops.

Seems the folks who used to keep tabs on the body count in Iraq are a bit slow on the updates. Whatever happened to those grim milestones?