1115.org

Sen. Joe Lieberman, WSJ op-ed, November 29, 2005:

I have just returned from my fourth trip to Iraq in the past 17 months and can report real progress there.

Sen. Joe Lieberman, during his unannounced trip to Iraq, May 30, 2007:

Overall, I would say what I see here today is progress. Significant progress from the last time I was here in December.

Is there a linguist in the house, please? Anyone who speaks Liebermanese? Or maybe Bushie double-speak, at a pinch?

If so, please let us all know: is significant progress an improvement over real progress? Are things improving at an improving rate?

I very much suspect Lieberman intends us to read his remarks that way. After all, he was all upbeat yesterday: “And, if you can see progress in war that means you are heading in the right direction.”

(To be fair, he’s always upbeat. Nothing puts him in an upbeat, optimistic frame of mind like holding forth on the Iraq War.)

Now here’s the problem, the way I see it. As with many other things in life, war progress has to be governed by a law of diminishing returns. The more progress you make, the less progress remains to be made in the future. If you keep making real, significant progress for more than 4 years, the rate of progress would have to keep slowing down. By now we should barely be making forward progress. Should, in fact, be within kissing distance of victory.

But by the testimony of Lieberman, we are still making palpably immense progress. What on earth could that possibly mean?