The Progress Myth in Iraq

The Progress Myth in Iraq


Posted on Mar. 8, 2006

By Molly Ivins

AUSTIN, Texas—It was such a relief to me to learn we are making “very, very good progress” in Iraq. As the third anniversary of our invasion approaches, I could not have been more thrilled by the news reported by Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on a Sunday chat show. Vice President Dick Cheney’s take was equally reassuring: Things are “improving steadily” in Iraq.

I was thrilled—very, very good progress and steady improvement, isn’t that grand? Wake me if anything starts to go wrong. Like someone bombing the al-Askari Mosque in Samarra and touching off a lot of sectarian violence.

I was also relieved to learn—via Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, so noted for his consistently accurate assessment of this war—that the whole picture is hunky-dory to tickety-boo. Since the bombing of the mosque, lots of alarmists have reported that Iraq is devolving or might be collapsing into civil war. They’re sort of jumping over the civil war line and back again—yep, it’s started; nope, it hasn’t—like a bunch of false starts at the beginning of a football play.

I’m sure glad to get the straight skinny from Ol’ Rumsfeld, who has been in Iraq many times himself for the typical in-country experience. Like many foreign correspondents, Rumsfeld roams the streets alone, talking to any chance-met Iraqi in his fluent Arabic, so of course he knows best...