The MSM Finds Reality & Prints Positive News On Iraq

First up is this from the editorial pages of the Washington Post - sure to have Harry Reid and company choking on their cornflakes. It is both an honest assessment of Iraq, President Bush and our own Congressional Democrats:

THE EVIDENCE is now overwhelming that the "surge" of U.S. military forces in Iraq this year has been, in purely military terms, a remarkable success. By every metric used to measure the war -- total attacks, U.S. casualties, Iraqi casualties, suicide bombings, roadside bombs -- there has been an enormous improvement since January. U.S. commanders report that al-Qaeda has been cleared from large areas it once controlled and that its remaining forces in Iraq are reeling. Markets in Baghdad are reopening, and the curfew is being eased; the huge refugee flow out of the country has begun to reverse itself. Credit for these achievements belongs in large part to U.S. soldiers in Iraq, who took on a tremendously challenging new counterterrorism strategy and made it work; to Gen. David H. Petraeus, the architect of that strategy; and to President Bush, for making the decision to launch the surge against the advice of most of Congress and the country's foreign policy elite.

. . . On Wednesday, House Democrats passed an Iraq spending bill that would have required Gen. Petraeus to abort his successful strategy, limit operations to counterterrorism and training, and withdraw all troops by the end of next year. Democratic leaders acted as if nothing has changed in Iraq since January. Perhaps the most charitable interpretation of their initiative is that they knew it would never survive scrutiny by the Senate, which promptly killed it. . . .

Read the article here. The part not quoted goes on to say that there is a narrow window to capitalize on this reality on the ground in Iraq and that much more needs to be done diplomatically. I could not agree more. Bush as well as the Democrats need to really push now. The military has performed, as always, exceptionally well.

It will be a cold day in hell - or the day their stock price falls below a dollar a share - before you see something similar stated in the editorial pages of the New York Times. Their article today credits Iran for a portion of the declining violence. I will withold judgment on that particular theory. But the Times does go on to tell of the efforts Maliki is making to open the government up to the Sunnis and to end the de-Ba'athification process. That certainly is important, and when that happens, the very last of Democratic talking points will fall by the wayside.