Benchmarks

AP reports, but grudgingly, that the latest report to congress identifies 15 of 18 benchmarks for Iraq as having been met. This is "achingly slow" progress apparently. Hey, we should be thankful they deemed it worth reporting on at all.

I have a theory. The AP, I think, is combating bloggers who would quote their content by cutting back on said content. "That's it," they said, "for starters, let's cut back on good news from Iraq."

Mort Kondracke has a thought though:

But I think that this provides a great opportunity for Barack Obama—when he goes to visit there, he can do the old George Aiken thing. Remember from 1966 during the Vietnam war, the Senator from Vermont said let's declare victory and pull out.

So he can declare victory, he can say has all this really has been done, the sacrifice of our brave troops have been rewarded, and now we're free to leave. We'll leave responsibly, but we're out.

Hmmm. Could be. The only problem will be in couching the "news" in a way that will admit progress has been made while denying credit to anyone involved. So, good news/bad news all over again. "Good news: You've made progress. Bad news: it wasn't you, oh, and we're going to cut and run."