Military officials say the darnedest things

Even in Vietnam they could rely on bodycounts.

Despite military reports to Congress that use numbers of attacks and overall levels of violence as an important gauge of Iraq's security status, Gates and Pace told reporters at the Pentagon yesterday that violence is not a useful measure of progress. Setting the stage for mandatory reports to Congress in September, both officials said violence could go up in the summer months as troops try to give the Iraqi government time to set the country on the right track.....

"If you had zero violence and people were not feeling good about their future, where are you?" said Pace, emphasizing that the sentiment of the Iraqi people is a much better measurement than the number of attacks. "So it's not about levels of violence. It's about progress being made, in fact, in the minds of the Iraqi people, so that they have confidence in their government in the way forward."

Maybe even worse,

More than three-quarters of the senior al-Qaida leaders holed up in Baqouba escaped as American soldiers launched an offensive earlier this week, the U.S. ground forces commander said on Thursday.

During a one day trip to the battlefield where about 10,000 U.S. troops are fighting to oust suspected al-Qaida militants, Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno said: "We believe 80 percent of the upper level (al-Qaida) leaders fled, but we'll find them."

"We'll find them." The whole difference in this operation was supposed to be the US effort to block those escape routes, and now we find out that it didn't work, but "we'll find them."

And, Oh, how I long for the tactical subtlety of "whack-a-mole."

"It's like jelly in a sandwich — it squirts when you squeeze it," said Maj. Robbie Parke, spokesman for the 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division. "We're fooling ourselves if we think we can hold them in."

This isn't about perception or presentation. It's about reality.