After circling the Baghdad airport for 40 minutes because of mortar and rocket fire, traveling by helicopter to the Green Zone to avoid the deadly bomb-strewn highway into the city and holding a meeting with President Jalal Talabani in darkness because the power was suddenly cut off, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice held a news conference Thursday to talk about all the progress being made in Iraq.

This kind of clueless happy talk in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary might produce great material for political satirists, but it’s not very encouraging for those looking for signs of hope in the Middle East.

— Rice’s Baffling Mideast Trip, L.A. Times Op-Ed, 10/08/2006

If this is progress, I’d hate to see what slippage looks like.

And this is an LA Times Op-Ed, not some random leftwing/rightwing wingnut out on the web. From one of the better papers in the U.S., and one that actually tries to do national/international coverage.