Perhaps this is more Baltar's territory than mine, but I think this Charles Bird post is worth linking too, as it's a nice collection of news stories from Iraq that could actually be termed "good news". Now it would be highly problematic to take this too far. It's not the least bit surprising that al Qaeda's favorability numbers have fallen in several countries, and the fact that civilian casualties have dropped could be as much due to ethnic cleansing campaigns having succeeded as to them having been stopped. And of course to the extent that this might suggest that "The Surge" is working in limiting deaths, it doesn't address the fact that it is in many ways an anti-national building plan that could very well bite the US in its ass, or the fact that the plan was put in effect ostensibly to create political progress (and on that point it has failed). Still, there have been fewer killings of civilians and US troops in the last couple months (though there are still too many), so it's at least nice to see those trend lines.
Posted by armand at November 4, 2007 11:36 AM | TrackBack | Posted to Iraq