It's all relative to your POV
It's really hard to determine if this is 'progress' or just a 'lull' in the action.
Just look to Afghanistan. If 'progress' is truly taking place there, why does Dubya want more troops to be sent there, after all these years since he spread his peculiar flavor of 'Freedom & Democracy' there .......at the point of a gun?
I mean Dubya's Debacle has already gone on longer than the US was in WWII, so one would expect there to be a lull in the action from time to time, just like in Afghanistan.
Afterall we have heard 'the insurgencey is in it's last throes' happy-horseshit line a couple times before, no?....
