You Call This Progress?

Last week, the Wall Street Journal, ever the apologist for George Bush's failed policies, put forth an editorial entitled "Progress in Baghdad." Let's contrast the WSJ editorial with what happened in Iraq this weekend.

WSJ: "[T]he last few days in Iraq have actually featured good news, as the government seems to be making some progress on key political and social issues. . . . the Baghdad plan is having an effect. . . Sunni jihadists are fleeing the capital in anticipation of a crackdown . . . clearly the bad guys are taking the joint U.S.-Iraqi effort to pacify the capital seriously. . . . For the moment at least, Iraq seems to be inching in the right direction."

So how did all that "progress" pan out this weekend in Iraq?

From the New York Times:

"A mammoth truck bomb obliterated a popular central Baghdad market on Saturday, ripping through scores of shops and flattening apartment buildings, killing at least 130 people and wounding more than 300 in the worst of a series of horrific attacks against Shiites in recent weeks."

"'Maliki and the Americans are sons of dogs because they do nothing to protect us,'" said one elderly man, crying and shouting as he was surrounded by younger men.

But that's not all. "Several Sunni neighborhoods came under retaliatory attack Saturday night" as they were struck by mortar rounds.

There's more: "The calamity in Baghdad came after a bloody day throughout the rest of Iraq that included a coordinated volley of seven car bombs in Kirkuk. . . . Gunmen fatally struck Iraqi forces twice in Samarra [killing 6 policemen in one attack and four soldiers in another]. Iraqi police also battled insurgents in a neighborhood of western Mosul on Saturday, while a large bomb wounded three policemen in another part of western Mosul. . . . The American military on Saturday reported the deaths of six more servicemen."

Some progress.