BP CEO Tony Hayward appeared optimistic Friday morning, saying on a morning TV show that he still believed that the odds for success in operation “top kill” were in his favor. The technique of shooting dense drilling mud into the gushing oil pipe a mile deep in the Gulf of Mexico, was, he said, making good progress already.

Here’s a picture of the oil-billowing pipe, only hours before top kill began:

Later Friday, two days into the process that was supposed to take between 24 and 48 hours to complete, BP COO Doug Suttles was cautiously optimistic. Things were going as expected, taking a little longer than he’d like, but still progressing.

Here’s a picture of the same pipe, taken late Friday:

Suttles had deftly handled my impertinent question at this afternoon’s press conference. After all the misleading and false statements made by Suttles, Hayward and Co., “Why should people believe you now?” I had asked.

He spun it well, not really answering, but suggesting that they, BP, were trying really hard to tell us all the truth in a timely fashion.

Pictures can be spun, too, of course. Suttles will no doubt try to spin these. But lies, like tops and shoddily built oil wells, eventually fall over. The only question is, how much more damage will be done while BP stalls, using tactics it knows won’t work?

From the Pulitzer-Prize winning New Orleans Times-Picayune, photos from the Gulf oil disaster.

In the last four or five years we have made major improvements in safety performance. It has made the company much better … Four years ago it could have been very different.

BP CEO Tony Hayward, 14 May,2010

Click here to view other Times-Picayune photo galleries of images from the BP Gulf of Mexico oil disaster.