The vacationing George W. Bush recently said from his Crawford, Texas ranch, "We've made a lot of progress" in Iraq. The pronouncement was timed with the White House release of a 24-page report called "Results in Iraq: 100 Days Toward Security and Freedom" [3]. Detailing "highlights of the successes" in Iraq, the report -- prepared by the White House Office of Global Communications and the staff of L. Paul Bremer, the U.S. administrator in Iraq -- makes claims that "differ significantly from the dozens of daily reports filed by journalists on the ground," WorkingforChange.com's Bill Berkowitz [4] writes.

"One of the things the terrorists in Baghdad and Jerusalem blew up yesterday was the credibility of the Panglossian Bush version of what's happening in the Middle East," the New York Times' Maureen Dowd writes. "In yet another spun-up government document on Iraq, the White House listed 100 ways that things were going great in the 100 days we've been on the scene. The report burbled with gimcrackery about the '10 signs of better infrastructure' -- days before an oil pipeline and then a water pipeline were blown up -- and about soccer balls and science textbooks."