Violence Against Iraq Troops Takes Toll

Key measures of the level of insurgent violence against American forces in Iraq, numbers of dead, wounded and insurgent attacks, show the situation has gotten worse since the summer.

When they say “worse”, I’m sure what they really mean is “the light of liberty is shining brightly.”

Or maybe that’s an oil fire. Hard to tell. Does the light of liberty include massive plumes of black smoke?

“All along the way it’s bumpy,” Rumsfeld told a group of Marines over lunch at their base outside of Fallujah, the city west of Baghdad where nearly 100 Marines have been killed over the past two months. “It’s tough, and there are setbacks. It’s not a smooth, easy, steady path to success.”

Unfortunately, the path to failure is a fuckin’ Slip-n-Slide. Watch your step.

U.S. commanders insist they are making progress, in part by taking the fight more directly to the insurgents. And they remain hopeful that more U.S.-trained Iraqi security forces will join the fight soon.

Sure, at first glance numbers like these look bad. I used to wonder how Bush could see this kind of trend and still say we’re making progress.

Then I realized, progress is a relative term. If you look at the numbers a different way, it doesn’t look so bad.

When viewing Bush’s recent actions through a mirror — giving medals to the architects of the Iraq invasion, lauding Rumsfeld for a job well done, bragging about the strength of the economy — suddenly it all makes sense.