Quote from BBC News -

Tony Blair said there were "signs of change and progress" in Iraq, as he made his seventh and probably his final visit there as prime minister.

He brushed aside a mortar attack on Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone minutes before he arrived, saying it was a distraction.

Officials said there was no evidence the attack, close to the British embassy, had been directed at him.

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The influential Chatham House think-tank said only last week that "Iraq faced a grim future" -

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/6664457.stm