Any claim of progress in Iraq may prompt the unavoidable question “progress by whose standards?” The White House’s claim is clear: by the standards of an administration that sold the invasion of Iraq as a war of liberation; that claimed that Saddam was a breath away from producing weapons of mass destruction and was part of a notorious Axis of Evil; that the U.S. army would be welcomed with roses in the streets of Baghad; that democracy and freedom would ring in the Arab and Islamic world; that Al Qaeda would be defeated and America would be safer.

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