As of yesterday, three years to the week after the president triumphantly proclaimed, "Let freedom reign," we are now seeing the end of the deadliest quarter for U.S. forces in Iraq since the war began.

As reader W.B. noted via email, using this data, we're also ending the deadliest four-month period and the deadliest five-month period. For all the talk from war supporters about "progress," the fatality rates are sobering.

That is, if you consider these rates important. Outgoing Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Peter Pace said the other day that violence in Iraq is a "self-defeating approach to tracking results." He recommends a more sensitive approach.

"What's most important is do the Iraqi people feel better about today than they did about yesterday, and do they think tomorrow's going to be better than today?

"If the answer to those two questions is yes, then we're on the right path. If the answer to those two questions is no, then we're not doing it right and we need to adjust our processes."

First, why Iraqis' sanguinity is a more reliable "metric" than U.S. fatalities is apparently only clear to Pace.

Second, even if we're playing by Pace's rules, Iraqis aren't feeling better today than yesterday: "The optimism that helped sustain Iraqis during the first few years of the war has dissolved into widespread fear, anger and distress amid unrelenting violence":

And third, we're measuring success in a war based on a population's feelings? Isn't that the kind of thing conservatives usually dismiss as namby-pamby liberalism?