Despite the signs of progress, recent opinion surveys show that more than 60 percent of the American public opposes the war and believes it will end badly. Democrats lashed out at presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain for saying it was “not too important” when American troops leave Iraq.
Reasons behind the decline in violence include the U.S. “surge” troop buildup of 2007, the Sunni revolt against al-Qaida in Iraq and a cease-fire called by al-Sadr last August.
When President Bush ordered the “surge,” U.S. officials said the goal was to bring down the violence so that Iraqi Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish politicians could forge power-sharing agreements necessary for long-term stability.
The lack of substantial power-sharing agreements has often been cited as a failure of the surge strategy.
In recent weeks, however, the factious, Shiite-led Iraqi government has won a measure of public support by standing up to Shiite and Sunni gunmen — even if a list of other goals such as constitutional amendments and a new oil law remain unfulfilled.
A new sense of confidence has emerged after recent Iraqi-run military operations against Sunni extremists, including al-Qaida, in the northern city of Mosul and against Shiite militiamen in Basra and Baghdad.
And the exact opposite is happening in Philadelphia
Many Iraqis are grumbling that they have yet to see the effects of the windfall in profits — estimated as high as $70 billion this year — that the country is expected to reap due to high world oil prices. Corruption and bureaucratic chaos are widely blamed for the problem.
How about paying back the Americans...?
No editorialization there.
And I am skeptical of the motives behind the determined and stubborn pessimism of our opposition politicians and their toadies in the press. Or would it be, the opposition press and their toadies in political office....
and, from the “Sure, now” dep’t:
Obama to visit Iraq, Afghanistan before election
AP on Yahoo | 6/16/08 | Nedra Pickler - ap
Posted on 06/16/2008 11:00:12 AM PDT by NormsRevenge
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2031866/posts
(could we pull US troops out of Iraq for just the day?)
Yahoo is reporting this? Hell must have froze over.
Most of the root causes of the war — notably the power struggle between Sunnis and Shiites_ remain unresolved.
Excuse me? The Sunni/Shi'a struggle was a root cause of the war? Gosh, I thought it might have been Saddam marching into Kuwait or something silly like that. Not that there was no Sunni/Shi'a conflict going on, mostly as the former shoveled the latter into mass graves, imprisoned their leaders, subjected their women to rape rooms, and generally made Genghis Kahn look like the lead character in Pee Wee's Big Adventure. The fact that there hasn't been an even larger Shi'a/Sunni bloodletting in revenge is one of the most amazing, laudable, and least celebrated achievements of U.S. policy there. A lot of people, including myself, thought it was inevitable and unstoppable.
But it is amusing to see the AP dredging up the Baghdad police blotter to convince its readers that signs of doom are the reality and signs of improvement only an evanescent illusion. The opposite is true. If at this point its editors can't admit that they were wrong it is high time for new editors.
Note to Democratic pinheads... must hold press conference to announce the Iraq conflict as a "quagmire."
PravdABDNC has done its job well at painting victory as defeat.
Pray for W and Our Freedom Fighters
“Violence is down, armed extremists are in disarray, government confidence is rising”
And Pelosi gives the credit to Iran for it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xd576oS_KL0
article re-titled to
Iraqi violence down; war’s root causes unresolved
“Those positive signs are attracting little attention in the United States, where the war-weary public is focused on the American presidential contest...”
Should read:
Those positive signs are attracting little MSM media attention in the United States, where the MSM is focused on the American presidential contest, seeing no Democratic traction to be gained from a victory in Iraq.
Then its clear that Robert Reid of the AP Baghdad office has been LYING to the public. Anyone could see that the surge was working by LAST summer, a full year ago.
Missing from this article (which seems to be intended to put a damper on the vast and undeniable improvements and accomplishments) is any mention of the quite significant improvement and growth and accomplishments of the Iraqi military forces.
The AP is in the Dem's and Obama’s pockets. Their unerring template is to make Iraq a failure and the deaths of U. S. service people there meaningless. I
If you want to know what is going on in Iraq and Afghanistan, start with the daily reports of the American Forces Press Service: www.defenselink.mil/news.