Quoted from the New York Times:

“The Iraqi Parliament passed a bill on Saturday to allow some former officials from Saddam Hussein's party to apply for government positions, in the first of the so-called political benchmark measures to pass after months of American pressure for progress.”

“The Bush administration had urged the Iraqi government to pass such a measure to help mend the deep rifts between Sunni Arabs who used to control the government under Mr. Hussein and the Shiites who now dominate politics here.”

They got it wrong in the wording. It’s more like:
“The Bush administration had urged the Iraqi government to pass such a measure in an effort to rectify its Stupidity (note that it’s written with a capital S) in the handling of post-invasion Iraq.”

The coverage of this “so-called political benchmark” makes it sound like we’re making progress when in reality Bush and his cronies are just reversing the hurried measures they took at the very beginning of this whole mess.

They set into action an exquisitely ill-advised occupation strategy that revolved around de-baathification. Like everything Bush does, it was thoroughly tactless and completely destructive.
Ba’ath party members that joined for survival weren’t taken into account, identification of rank was based on unreliable sources, and some members that had committed all forms of atrocities while under Saddam were appointed to senior positions in the interim government after the realization that everything was falling apart and some form of bureaucratic administration was desperately needed.

Meanwhile, the occupation authorities continued their idiocy and dissolved the military leaving large numbers of men with no means of supporting their families and understandably bitter.

The Baath party was mostly Sunni, although some Shia held low level positions. So they equated de-baathification with de-sunnification.
They were removed from power in one clean sweep; thus alienating a population that would had been critical to the rebuilding of Iraq. It made them defensive and distrustful of the occupation authorities.

We set free their dormant sectarian hatreds. We made distinctions between good and bad, those in power and those left to fend for themselves, along sectarian lines.

Jobless, alienated, distrustful, and pissed off Iraqis responded with the violence that our soldiers are still trying to quell.

This is not what I would consider progress.