Sen. Barack Obama got a lot of attention, and love from the anti-war crowd, for a comment that was interpreted as a direct shot at John McCain:

“No matter how much this Administration wishes it to be true, the idea that the situation in Iraq is improving because it only takes a security detail of 100 soldiers, three Blackhawk helicopters, and two Apache gunships to walk through a market in the middle of Baghdad is simply not credible or reflective of the facts on the ground.”

Considering how that market, the Shorja market, was attacked by a truck bomb and at least two other bombs on Feb. 12, killing at least 61 Iraqis (some reports had it more), I don’t think it’s that outrageous to declare that the situation in that market has improved. In fact, as the New York Times reported that day:

The attack at Shorja market was at least the fifth bombing there since August. It was one of more than a dozen strikes at markets over the past year, which have killed a total of more than 500 people.

I’ll take shoppers being searched over dead bodies and flaming shrapnel.

Look, we shouldn’t have any illusions about the violence in Iraq, but that doesn’t mean we should ignore incremental signs of progress, either. If you don’t like McCain’s assessment, how about this assessment:

According to David Kilcullen, senior counter-insurgency adviser to General David Petraeus, the US commander in Iraq, heightened security has forced suicide bombers to detonate their devices at checkpoints well away from targets such as markets and other public gatherings, “killing far fewer people than intended, and far fewer than in similar attacks last year”. Colonel Kilcullen, an Australian former special forces officer, added that several bombs failed to explode, “showing a loss of skill as key bomb-makers are taken off the streets”. Other reports show a steep decline in the number of bodies found dumped overnight, indicating that the “surge” is curbing the activities of death squads. Civilian deaths in Baghdad were at record levels in the final months of last year, and remained high in January. Then, the start of the “surge” around 20 February saw the number of deaths fall in that month by more than two thirds, to 446. But the difficulty of maintaining the improvement was shown by events in March. Another reduction in deaths seemed on the cards until last Thursday, when two suicide attackers wearing explosives vests blew themselves up in a market in the mainly Shia Shaab district, killing nearly 80 people.

Or Jack Keane, who regularly consults Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton:

Retired Gen. Jack Keane, a former Army vice chief of staff and an adviser to the Iraq Study Group, recently returned from consulting with top generals in Iraq. Keane said Bush is pushing Prime Minister Nouri al-Malaki hard, and he has seen encouraging signs that suggest the Iraqis could meet the timetable. Tribal leaders in the Anbar province are rejecting the influence of al-Qaida and insurgent forces there. A proposal for sharing oil revenues among the Kurdish north, Sunni middle, and Shiite south is being debated, though it’s stalled in the Cabinet. “We can’t be triumphant about it,” Keane said. “But we can be encouraged.”

Or those noted administration propagandists at ABC News:

Charles Gibson: “Meanwhile, Iraq’s government announced today that the security situation in Baghdad has improved in recent weeks — enough that the city’s curfew can be relaxed. Until now, the curfew has been 8 PM till 5 AM. Now, Baghdad residents will be allowed on the street until 10 PM. ABC’s Terry McCarthy has been checking out conditions in some of the city’s neighborhoods, and has found definite improvement.”

(Meanwhile, on the Situation Room on CNN, Obama put words in McCain’s mouth in a ridiculously hyperbolic manner:

What we have continued to see over the last four to five years is the constant presentation by the administration and prominent supporters like John McCain that we are making progress and that things are terrific in Iraq, and that’s not the case.

Show me one time anyone in the administration or McCain has said, “things are terrific in Iraq.”)

Beyond that, Obama’s jab at McCain illustrates that his vision on Iraq essentially consists of pointing fingers, leaving, and hope for the best, even though every indicator is that a U.S. departure would precipitate a bloodbath that would make the current violence look mild bye comparison.

I’m sure someone will point to the recent suicide bombing in the Iraqi Parliament Building and say, “oh how terrible, we can’t even secure the Green Zone, this is a sign that our efforts are futile and the bad guys are winning, and we ought to leave.” Well, if we leave now, Iraq won’t have a parliament building, nor a parliament.

If you feel that the situation in Iraq is an “ever-worsening humanitarian crisis”, then you have to be ready to accept a much, much worse humanitarian crisis when there are no U.S. soldiers on any street corners to deter any attacks by anyone against anyone else. Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden just called for U.S. forces to be deployed to Sudan to stop the mass killings there. What does he think would happen in Iraq if our troops left tomorrow?

I don’t make this point to say, “things in Iraq are great” or that U.S. forces should stay forever. But I don’t like making policy based on an ironclad belief of, “the situation has to improve under my preferred policy change, because it can’t get any worse.” Because the moment you conclude things can’t get worse, they usually do.

By the way, Obama has introduced legislation to begin removing troops by the first of next month, and finish it by March 2008.