In Iraq, things are looking up.

Unfortunately, they're looking up your shorts.

Back in the days of Saddam Hussein, his son Uday was president of the Iraqi National Olympic Committee. Uday tortured athletes for losing games, tossing ball-bobbling jocks into jail where he beat them, chained them to walls, urinated on their shaved heads, and basically give them the Abu Ghraib ESPN II treatment just to, you know, motivate them.

Think Bobby Knight on a bad day.

But Uday's playing bocce in hell right now and I say good riddance, because today's athletes can now perform at the top of their game, free from fear and intimidation, unless they're wearing shorts.

That's right. Wearing shorts. This weekend gunmen killed the coach of Iraq's national tennis team and two of his players for showing their bare legs in public.

Now, if they had targeted Richard Simmons, that's something most right-thinking Americans could get behind. But not Iraq's tennis players. Not unless they were showing their naked legs in say, Kansas.

Leg flashers aren't the only athletes having a hard time in this new, free, turned-the-corner, mission-accomplished Iraq. Gunmen have abducted tae kwondo experts near Ramadi and Iraq's Olympic Committee Director-General was kidnapped north of Baghdad just last year.

These killings are on top of the 30+ bombings we had this weekend, including the one that killed a camera man and sound tech for CBS and seriously wounded Kimberly Dozier, the CBS reporter.

Laura Ingraham, right-wing radio skank who said reporters aren't getting the good news because they stay in the comfort of their cushy suites and report from "hotel balconies," should take note and consider apologizing for being such a fucking cunt.

But that would mean she'd have to admit being wrong. Sheesh, what dream world am I living in?

So this is for you, Laura, some good news. Thanks to us, Iraqi gunmen are now free to kill people wearing shorts. This story just gets better and better.

Is it too early for a vodka tonic?