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.
“This relative calm is the calm before the storm,” said Mohammed al-Sheikhli, director of the Transitional Justice Research Center in Baghdad. “The worst violence is not over because the calm may collapse any moment.”
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looks like this Transitional Justice Research Center is Iraq’s version of the ACLU and/or DNC
So, lack of immediate gratification equals "unfounded optimism".
If what the writer says in this article is true, then the optimism was not "unfounded".
So you take a bunch of examples of progress and urinate all over them AP? You leftist scum