Sometimes a Story's Lead Says it All

Check out the lead paragraph from today's New York Times about Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's visit to Baghdad:

"Wearing a helmet and a flak jacket and flanked by machine-gun-toting bodyguards to defend against insurgents, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice came here Thursday, insisting that there were new signs of progress in Iraq and that the Bush administration had never sugarcoated its news about the American occupation."

Well, I guess it's a sign of "progress" that her plane wasn't shot down on the way in.