Making Great Progress

Condoleeza Rice's 'surprise' visit to Iraq yesterday did not get a lot of media coverage amidst all the other news, and that is probably for the best for an embattled White House. Here are the highlights of her trip-

Iraq is making so much progress that the “C-17A cargo plane equipped with antimissile technology” carrying Condi Rice had to circle for 40 minutes, because the Baghdad airport was being bombed again.

Once on the tarmac, she was put in body armor and surrounded by a gang of heavily armed anti-assassins from some special ops group or another, and then quickly shuffled from the C-17 to an Army chopper for a quick and dangerous flight to the walled, fortified Green Zone in the middle of Battlefield Baghdad. No way was Condi Rice going to risk the deadly airport highway.

She had a brief meeting with whatever hapless Iraqi is “president” this year, but the power went out, so they sat there in the dark. This week, 21 U.S. troops have been killed along with the usual bloody pile of Iraqi corpses. But Rice says the prime minister is really making progress now, because he finally fired 800 cops that were actually part of the Death Squads that actually run the streets. Progress!

And via Andrew Sullivan, this picture of Condi on the airport runway says it all...



The security delays from Condi's travel also disrupted an important London meeting on Iran's nuclear program.

I'm so glad that we're staying the course there. See you at the victory party!