Things Are Looking Rosy in Iraq... per Mr. Bush

As Bush has been telling us lately, things are definitely improving in Iraq. Here's the latest proof:

Suicide Bomber Kills 7 in Baghdad Blast Was Near Hotel Housing Iraqi Officials By Rajiv Chandrasekaran - Washington Post Foreign Service - Monday, October 13, 2003; Page A01 BAGHDAD, Oct. 12 -- A suicide bomber detonated explosives packed in a car outside a Baghdad hotel housing Iraqi government officials and U.S. contractors on Sunday, unleashing a wave of debris that tore through the hotel's crowded driveway and a busy commercial street. At least seven people and the bomber were killed, and as many as 40 others were wounded in the midday blast at the Baghdad Hotel, including one member of Iraq's Governing Council and three Americans, according to U.S. military officials and hospitals that treated the injured. Six of those killed were Iraqi security guards, a military official said. The explosion transformed a bustling block in central Baghdad into a panorama of wartime devastation and deepened the unease many Iraqis have about security in the capital. Glass shards, pieces of twisted metal and pools of blood littered the street. Battered and burned survivors, some missing limbs, screamed for help as the acrid smoke from burning cars obscured rescuers. The force of the blast was so powerful that body parts were found on nearby roofs. The explosion was the seventh fatal car bomb attack on Iraqis and others cooperating with the U.S.-led occupation since early August, dealing another blow to American efforts to achieve stability in Iraq six months after the toppling of Saddam Hussein's government. Explosives-laden vehicles have struck U.N. headquarters in Baghdad twice, the Jordanian Embassy, two police stations in the capital and the country's most sacred Shiite Muslim shrine. More than 135 people, almost all of them Iraqis, were killed in those attacks.