The Redhunter

Oh, and it emerged that the Iraqi "head" of the terrorists was just a front - in the words of one Army officer, Omar al Baghdadi was "a Wizard of Oz-like creation designed to give an impression that al Qaeda has Iraqis in its senior ranks."

* Al Qaeda has been pushed right across Anbar, from the once Wild West to the province's eastern fringes. The terrorists are still dug in elsewhere, from the Diyala River Valley to a few Baghdad neighborhoods - but, to quote that senior officer again, "our forces have been taking out their leaders faster than they can find qualified replacements."
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* It isn't only al Qaeda taking serious hits. After briefly showing the flag, Muqtada al-Sadr fled back to Iran again, trailed by his senior deputies. Mookie's No. 2 even moved his family to Iran. Why? Though he's been weak in the past, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is now green-lighting Iraqi operations against the Jaish al Mahdi, the Mookster's "Mahdi Army."

* The Iraqi Police Tactical Support Unit in Nasiriyah came under attack by Mahdi Army elements accustomed to intimidating their enemies. Supported by a brave (and tiny) U.S. advisory team, the police commandos fought them off. Instead of a walkover, the militia thugs hit a wall - and got hammered by airstrikes, for good measure. Then the Iraqi police counter-attacked. The Mahdi Army force begged for negotiations.

* In Mosul, Iraqi army and police units stuck to their guns through a series of tough combat engagements, with the result that massive arms caches were seized from the terrorists and insurgents. In Kirkuk, Iraqi police reacted promptly to last week's gruesome car-bombing - in time to stop two other car bombs from reaching their intended targets.

* In Baghdad, the surge isn't only about American successes - Iraqi security and intelligence forces conducted a series of hard-hitting operations against both al Qaeda and Iran-backed Special Group terrorists.

But don't just take it from a former Army colonel. Here's General (as in 4 stars) Jack Keane, former vice-chief of staff, as interviewed by Rich Lowry of NRO. Keane, along with Frederick Kagan, wrote the draft of the plan popularly known as the "surge". Here are some key parts of the interview

Rich Lowry: How’s the surge going?

General Jack Keane: Well I think it’s going better than we had expected, particularly as it pertains to the security operation. The success that the security operation is achieving is, in my judgment, very definable.
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Lowry: How much of a worry is it when you look at the numbers that some of the sectarian killings are bouncing back up somewhat?

Gen. Keane: What has happened is the al Qaeda are trying to provoke the same response in ‘07 that they achieved in ‘06 by killing Shia at unacceptable levels to the Shia and the Shia militias. The fact is that they have been unsuccessful at provoking that kind of response that they got in ‘06,

Lowry: How about the Sunnis?

Gen. Keane: What offers us so much promise is that the Sunnis themselves have broken, not all of them, but many of them have broken with the al Qaeda and have aligned themselves with us. ...

This is very significant and some Intel analysts who are looking at this in ‘07 believe that when we look back on ‘07 that not only will it be a turning point in what we did to secure Baghdad and the people. They believe that ‘07 will be looked through the prism of ‘08 or 9 or 10 as the beginning of the defeat of al Qaeda because what is happening to them is they’re losing their Sunni infrastructure support.
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Lowry: How important are the political benchmarks everyone is talking about in Washington?

Gen. Keane: I think we make these things far more important than what they truly are. On the surface of it, certainly they all seem very reasonable, but when you get down to the practicality of it, some of them are clearly not executable at this time because this fledging government, 18 months into its existence, is not capable of making some of these major changes. We are asking them to pass five or six major laws that deal with the very survivability of the state, and we are asking them to do that in an almost six-month time frame. That is unrealistic...

Lowry: Conventional wisdom is that no matter how well the surge is going by the spring of next year, the president will have to start drawing down.

Gen. Keane: The surge, or the counter offensive as I like to describe it, was recommended to be a temporary operation, and for the people who were implementing it, they knew it was a temporary operation. Those of us who have looked at it quite a bit in the preliminary discussions, we believe that this was always a temporary operation that was going to last 12-18 months. And that sometime in ’08, late ‘08 at the very latest, we would probably be reducing back to pre-surge levels.

As Gen. Petraeus told me on the phone just over the weekend, the speed of which things are moving in terms of achieving more security and stability has surprised him, because of the cumulative affect of the application of military force in all these areas, all at the same time.

So far, then, so good. We'll certainly have all the facts laid out before us in September when Gen Petraeus makes his presentation to Congress.

But many in Washington don't want to wait. Back to Peters' editorial, appropriately titled "Winning in Iraq, Losing in Washington". He concludes by asking

Is success suddenly guaranteed in Iraq? Of course not. The situation's still a bloody mess. But it's also more encouraging than it's been since the summer of 2003, when the downward slide began.

Gen. Dave Petraeus and his subordinate commanders are by far the best team we've ever had in place in that wretched country. They're doing damned near everything right - with austere resources, despite the surge. And they're being abandoned by your elected leaders.