Last Throes
Priceless moments at the press gaggle with Scotty McC:

After McClellan outlined the president's plans, leading up to a key June 28th speech, ABC correspondent Terry Moran asked a pointed question, which referred back to an assessment recently made by Vice President Dick Cheney. Q Scott, is the insurgency in Iraq in its last throes? MR. McCLELLAN: Terry, you have a desperate group of terrorists in Iraq that are doing everything they can to try to derail the transition to democracy. The Iraqi people have made it clear that they want a free and democratic and peaceful future. And that's why we're doing everything we can, along with other countries, to support the Iraqi people as they move forward. The fact that they are making great progress on the political front is significant because that helps defeat the terrorists, because the terrorists don't want to see democracy take hold. They don't want lasting democratic institutions to be put in place. And that's why we are standing with the Iraqi people as they move forward on the political front. [snip] Q But the insurgency is in its last throes? MR. McCLELLAN: The Vice President talked about that the other day -- you have a desperate group of terrorists who recognize how high the stakes are in Iraq. A free Iraq will be a significant blow to their ambitions. Q But they're killing more Americans, they're killing more Iraqis. That's the last throes? MR. McCLELLAN: Innocent -- I say innocent civilians. And it doesn't take a lot of people to cause mass damage when you're willing to strap a bomb onto yourself, get in a car and go and attack innocent civilians. That's the kind of people that we're dealing with. That's what I say when we're talking about a determined enemy. Q Right. What is the evidence that the insurgency is in its last throes? MR. McCLELLAN: I think I just explained to you the desperation of terrorists and their tactics. Q What's the evidence on the ground that it's being extinguished? MR. McCLELLAN: Terry, we're making great progress to defeat the terrorist and regime elements. You're seeing Iraqis now playing more of a role in addressing the security threats that they face. They're working side by side with our coalition forces. They're working on their own. There are a lot of special forces in Iraq that are taking the battle to the enemy in Iraq. And so this is a period when they are in a desperate mode. Q Well, I'm just wondering what the metric is for measuring the defeat of the insurgency. MR. McCLELLAN: Well, you can go back and look at the Vice President's remarks. I think he talked about it. Q Yes. Is there any idea how long a last throe lasts for? MR. McCLELLAN: Go ahead, Steve.

Interesting that Scotty McC thought Cheney had offered up some metrics to defend his fairy tale pronouncement that we had that bad guys on the run.

"The level of activity that we see today from a military standpoint, I think, will clearly decline. I think they're in the last throes, if you will, of the insurgency."

Nope, seems pretty vague. Well, maybe Scotty is thinking about our reinstatement of listing body counts:

The body counts are back. For the first time since Vietnam, the U.S. military has begun regularly reporting the number of enemy killed in the war zone -- in contradiction, apparently, to prior statements by its own top brass.

"Marines Kill 100 Fighters in Sanctuary Near Syria" was a front page headline in the Washington Post last month. The body count, coming from a Marine spokesman, was carried in other major papers that day. What was striking about the factoid, besides the elegantly even number, was that it showed how the U.S. military has increasingly released body counts in reports depicting successful operations in Iraq -- despite decrees from the highest levels of the Pentagon, throughout the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, that "we don't do body counts."