ONE OF THE WEAKNESSES of a totalitarian dictatorship is that even the people running things wind up not knowing much:

Maj. Gen. Sufian al Tikriti left Baghdad on Sunday in a white Toyota sedan, in uniform and alone except for a chauffeur.

Just outside the city, the Republican Guard general came upon a Marine Corps roadblock, where he died.

His sudden death, and a great deal of other evidence, suggests how little Iraq’s military knows about the whereabouts and movements of the U.S. and British soldiers who invaded their country three weeks ago.

“I think they are basically clueless,” said a senior officer of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force (IMEF). “They have no situational awareness,” he said, using the military term for knowing the locations of friendly and enemy forces.

That fits interestingly with this report:

A captured Iraqi colonel being held in one of the hangars listened in astonishment as his information minister praised Republican Guard soldiers for recapturing the airport.

He looked at his captors and, as he realised that what he had heard was palpably untrue, his eye filled with tears. Turning to a translator, he asked: “How long have they been lying like this?”

All along, buddy. All along. (Via SgtStryker).

UPDATE: CPO Sparkey links to some more stories along this line and observes:

If you kill messengers for news you don’t like, soon all you’ll hear is happy lies. This can go on for awhile, but eventually the the truth will bring death to your doorstep.

Indeed.