If you were to read this article you wouldn't have a clue, but you would come to see that it is elusive.  If my reading is correct basically what we're seeing now in Iraq is a wash.  Number of attacks in Baghdad are steady and rising, violence is moving to surrounding areas as well as what once were fairly quiet parts of the country, sectarian killings are down (if we leave out those killed by car bombs), while the Shiites have already ethnically cleansed most of East Baghdad they can't expand for the time being, no political compromises expected before the Iraqi government takes a couple months off during the summer, oh, and attacks have decreased in Anbar province.  In fact, the US military is so confident things are gonna work over time that they refuse to release any sort of statistics on the number of attacks on US and Iraqi forces in Baghdad? 

Which gets me back to "progress", what does it mean in this context?  How do we measure it especially when it doesn't appear to be happening in any real quantifiable way?  I know, wait until all the troops get there and see what happens but I keep seeing things that question the efficacy of even our current strategy.  Check out this Pat Lang post and tell me he doesn't have a point that most of these outposts we're putting up in Baghdad are poorly placed, difficult to defend and difficult to relieve in the case of a well-coordinated attack, which will eventually come.  I too was struck by the picture, not realizing we were putting up blast walls around everything and puzzled that fields of fire appeared almost non-existent in these built up areas. 

And don't expect Ray Odierno to sort it out.  His command of the 4th Infantry Division in the first two years of the occupation will someday be a textbook in how not to fight a counterinsurgency.  For instance, intimidating and terrorizing the population as force protection is as a rule really bad, detaining all the men (suspect or not) in a sweep area and sending them to an already crowded Abu Ghraib prison is a recipe for disaster, and, my favorite, counterinsurgency by interdicting artillery fire (ie. receive a little mortar fire and drop a couple hundred artillery shells on small towns and farm fields) really doesn't work.  Yep, one more thing that doesn't give me any hope this will work.  Sure Petraeus is overall commander, but Ray Odierno does the day to day and I while I know he is an asshole, I have no confidence he really knows what he's doing. 

Which gets me back to my main question, what is progress?