The next six months in Iraq are the most important since the war began. The Baghdad troop surge is President Bush's last chance to salvage a semblance of success or even a manageable exit. Democrats in Congress don't have the votes to stop the surge, but that will change if the war does not.

That helps explain why Americans were treated to a bizarre spectacle last weekend, when some of Bush's congressional allies went to Baghdad's largest open-air market, didn't get shot, and declared that was evidence the surge might be starting to work.

In comments that rival some of the war's other signature lines, such as "mission accomplished" and "bring it on," Rep. Mike Pence (news, bio, voting record), R-Ind., said the Baghdad market was just "like a normal outdoor market in Indiana in the summertime."

If so, visitors to Indiana might want to pack a little heat. Pence, Sen. John McCain (news, bio, voting record), R-Ariz., and their colleagues were wearing bulletproof vests, arrived in a convoy of armored vehicles and were protected by sharpshooters on rooftops, attack helicopters overhead and 100 heavily armed American troops on the ground.

Pence and McCain aren't completely wrong. There are faint signs of progress since the surge began seven weeks ago.

Some militia forces have pulled out to avoid contact with U.S. troops, execution-style killings are down and things have calmed enough that the city's curfew has been shortened by two hours.

But the killings and bombings have continued, and there are signs the worst violence has merely moved elsewhere. Last week, a pair of truck bombings killed 152 people in Tal

Afar, a city Bush once cited as a model of the U.S. "clear, hold and build" strategy. Reprisals quickly killed 45 more.

Supporters of the surge say troops have cut down on bombings by putting concrete barriers around markets such as the one Pence and McCain visited (where a bombing killed scores of people in February). But killers are as adaptable as they are vicious; last week, a suicide bomber walked past barriers into another market and blew himself up, killing more than 60 people.

From the start, the war has ebbed and flowed. There have been times when deaths and attacks fell, when it was tempting to conclude that U.S.-led forces had turned the tide. But too often, supposed signs of progress - more cooperation and intelligence tips from Iraqis, for example - are familiar claims officials have made over and over again almost since the 2003 invasion.

It's not that there's no good news. Rather, the flood of good news that flowed from Iraq during and after the invasion was gradually overwhelmed by rebellion, rising sectarian slaughter, virulent anti-Americanism and the failure of one strategy after another. Now when Bush says this plan will work, the public and the media are understandably wary.

That history - as well as the disturbing facts on the ground - are ample reason to be skeptical that the surge will succeed. But given the price of defeat, there is also compelling reason to hope that it will.

It's just too early for judgment.

We certainly know that life in Baghdad is nothing like a peaceful summer afternoon in Indiana. But it's not entirely like it was three months ago, either. The relevant question is what it will look like six months from now.