Nobody talks about the painted schools anymore

In one of those intangible measures of a degrading Iraq, I keep thinking to Peter Pace's comment on Thursday,

"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."

What strikes me this morning is they're no longer even pointing to "painted schools" as a sign of success, they're asking us to believe in the possibility of "painted hearts" instead.

Really, what signs of progress are the war proponents left holding up at this point? The possibility that maybe one of the benchmarks (the oil law) might be met, maybe, by the end of the year?

No political reconciliation, no rebuilding, no growing Iraqi Army...

If you want a barometer of where we are, think about the "progress" we're being told to see.