"success"

The White House Version of Success
Earlier today on MSNBC, White House Communications Director Nicolle Devenish said the administration supports a “conditions-based withdrawal” from Iraq. As an example of the improved security there, she pointed to today’s transfer of a Tikrit palace to the Iraqis:

…[C]urrent administration policy, which is for a conditions-based withdrawal from Iraq, which means that as the Iraqis can take control of their own security - and you saw an important handover today in Tikrit in Iraq. This was a lavish palace that once housed Saddam Hussein’s mother. It’s now going to be enjoyed by the Iraqi people.

If that’s their example of a success story, things are worse than we thought. From
the AP today:

Insurgents fired a mortar at a U.S. ceremony attended by top officials on Tuesday to hand over a presidential palace in Saddam Hussein’s hometown to Iraqi authorities, sending the U.S. ambassador and top commander scrambling for cover but causing no injuries.

As a U.S. colonel was giving a speech, the mortar whistled as it fell into a field about 300 yards away from the palace in Tikrit, 80 miles north of Baghdad, according to an Associated Press reporter at the scene. The mortar failed to explode when it hit the ground.

(Think Progress)