Things are going swimmingly in Iraq.
About 300 Turkish soldiers, carrying only light weapons, entered an area of the mountainous northern Kurdish province of Dahuk, about 200 km (120 miles) from the Iraqi city of Kirkuk, where Rice's plane first touched down.
The soldiers clashed with Kurdish separatist guerrillas, a Turkish military official said. Turkey says it has the right to use military force to combat Kurdish rebels who shelter in the semi-autonomous Kurdish region of northern Iraq.
How long has it been since The Surge was supposed to give the Iraqi Government breathing room for political progress on important issues? 9 months, 10 months?
"What is missing here, and what is absolutely necessary over the long term to secure all of this, is political progress," State Department Iraq coordinator David Satterfield told reporters. "They (have) got to move."
Security in Iraq has improved due to the deployment of an extra 30,000 U.S. troops, an uprising by Sunni Arab tribes against al Qaeda, and a six-month ceasefire declared by Shi'ite cleric and militia leader Moqtada al-Sadr.
Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's Shi'ite-led government, however, remains paralyzed by infighting and has made little headway in passing laws seen as vital to reconciling the country's sects and ethnic groups.
At least this article acknowledges that the perceived drop in violence is not solely due to the glorious surge.
But wait, it gets better. As LithiumCola noted, the Iraqi Constitution requires a referendum in ethnically-mixed, oil-rich Kirkuk to decide whether that city will join the Kurdish autonomous region.
Satterfield said the United Nations special representative to Iraq, Steffan de Mistura, had secured an agreement between the different parties in the past few days to allow the United Nations to play an enlarged role in moving the referendum process forward.
"This is a very big step," he said.
Rice's deputy, John Negroponte, said earlier this month that it would be impossible to hold the referendum by the end of this year as planned. The Baghdad government has made no preparations amid fears that the poll could trigger a new wave of violence in Iraq if it goes ahead over the objections of Arabs and Turkmen.
So they're delaying a constitutionally-required vote in order to avoid a new wave of violence.