Good News from Iraq

http://www.nypost.com/php/pfriendly/print.php?url=http://www.nypost.com/seven/08152007/postopinion/editorials/good_news_from_iraq_editorials_.htm New York Post August 15, 2007 -- News out of Iraq continues to be encouraging: High-profile attacks have fallen nearly 50 percent since the start of the troop surge, USA Today reported this week. Gen. David Petraeus, commanding the war in Iraq, says hundreds of al Qaeda fighters were killed or captured in just the past month alone. Tips about the enemy are up fourfold over the last year - to some 23,000 a month. "Tribes and people are starting to stand up and fight back," said Brig. Gen. Mick Bednarek, deputy commander of the U.S. division north of Baghdad, in the USA Today report. "They are turning against al Qaeda." It's a sign of the preliminary success of a number of operations now under way, as troop strength has finally reached the maximum planned by the surge. To think that just a month ago, Democrats were trying to pull the plug on Iraq. Maybe they feared exactly what is happening: The tide in Iraq seems to be turning in America's favor - and that spells bad news for the Dems, who've pinned their own political fates on the White House failing in the war. Democrats aren't the only ones who have suddenly gone mum: Little by way of saber-rattling has been heard from the mullahs' motor-mouth in Iran, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The shifts, in rhetoric and on the ground, could portend, well . . . anything. The enemy may be laying low, figuring they can't bear - at the moment, anyway - the high cost of additional attacks and confrontations. Or they may be re-arming for a major offensive. Surely they've by no means ended their violence completely, even temporarily: Yesterday, suicide bombers killed at least 175 people and wounded 200. But Coalition forces aren't letting up, either: This week, they launched a third major campaign, Operation Phantom Strike, aimed at disrupting al Qaeda and Iranian-backed operations. The verdict is still out on Iraq. Far-left Democrats may yet force a premature pullout. But Americans can hope for the best. There's no reason to cut this war short.