LIKE ARMAGEDDON

Lara Logan was on Face the Nation this morning and had this to say about Iraq (Crooks & Liars has the video)

SCHIEFFER: And good morning again. We start this morning in Baghdad, where our CBS News chief foreign correspondent Lara Logan has just arrived for another tour there.

Lara, I know you have just come from briefings with US military officials. What's your assessment at this point? Is it better, worse, or about the same as when you left?

LARA LOGAN reporting:
Well, I can tell you, Bob, I've only been gone about six weeks, and just the drive from the airport into Baghdad itself was really visually disturbing. You could sense there was a dramatic change in the feeling in the city itself. It looks like a wasteland. The drive really reminded me of something out of Armageddon. But talking to US military officers, they say they are measures here that they regard as indicators of progress, as moving in the right direction. And one particularly that they point to is the fact that there's been around a 50 percent drop in the number of Iraqi civilian deaths in the capital itself. And they say that that shows that they are having an affect on the different networks in the city, and that is a measure they say is particularly important, of course, to the Iraqi people. Even though attacks on US forces are dramatically up since the surge began, they say that that is to be expected, because there are a lot more US troops out there. And what Iraqi people really care about is do they feel safer in their neighborhoods? They're not as concerned about attacks on US forces as they are about attacks on their own people, their own communities. And the US military says they want the Iraqis feeling safer. So they take that as a sign of progress, even though, from the outside, it looks to people back home that if there are more US soldiers dying here, then things can't be better.

Lara missed the latest: Sectarian violence has returned to pre-surge levels.