Progess versus desperation.

President Bush last night on the war in Iraq:

"We're making good progress."

Fact check: (The president isn't a fact checker, remember?)

An estimated 12 well coordinated car bombings occurred today in Iraq. Luckily, the insurgency has spent itself, or it could have been much worse. (The "Allawi end of the insurgency countdown" is at almost three months and counting.)

The NY Times:

"At least 23 Iraqi policemen and troops were killed. Some reports put the total death toll at as many as 50 people. Later in the day, other car bomb attacks struck Diyarah, 20 miles south of Baghdad, killing two American soldiers, and near Taji, just north of Baghdad, where a bomber killed one American soldier and wounded two others. One American soldier was also killed and four were wounded by a homemade bomb Thursday night near Hawija, 150 miles north of Baghdad.

With Friday's attacks, at least 480 Iraqi policemen and troops have been killed by insurgents in the last two months, according to tallies by Western security contractors, Iraqi officials and local news accounts."

USA Today:

"President Bush...blamed rising violence in Iraq on U.S. progress being made there, saying coalition successes are making insurgents more desperate.

The more progress we make on the ground, the more free the Iraqis become, the more electricity that's available, the more jobs are available, the more kids that are going to school, the more desperate these killers become," Bush told reporters."

Sorry, that was from an article on 10/27/2003. (See Thursday, 21 April 2005 for link to a whole bunch more of the same talking points going back to the beginning of the war.)