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The New York Times finally discovers a breaking news story from Iraq -- that life has improved as a result of the surge. Well, for most of the rest of us, that hardly qualifies as breaking news, as we have tracked the decline in violence and the rise of commerce for the last three months. The Paper of Record catches up today with a front-page story and even an accompanying interactive graphic: The security improvements in most neighborhoods are real. Days now pass without a car bomb, after a high of 44 in the city in February. The number of...

A few weeks ago, in Britain's Prospect magazine, the paper's foreign editor, Bartle Bull, published a bold essay saying that the high tide of violence in Iraq was essentially behind us and that the ebb had disclosed some interesting things. First, the Iraqi people as a whole had looked into the abyss of civil war and had drawn back from the brink. Second, the majority of Sunni Arabs had realized that their involvement with al-Qaida forces was not a patriotic "insurgency" but was instead a horrific mistake and had exposed their society to the most sadistic and degraded element in...

‘Historic occasion’ highlights increased level of cooperation from former foes. BAGHDAD — Sunnis in Baghdad are signing up in large numbers to join Shiite-dominated Iraqi security forces — a sign, according to the U.S. Army, that Sunnis here are keen to follow the path to peace taken by their kinsmen in Anbar province. On Thursday, dozens of young Sunni men showed up for an Iraqi security forces recruiting drive at Joint Security Station Cougar, a base in Baghdad’s Sadiahy neighborhood that is home to Company F, 2nd Squadron, 2nd Cavalry (Stryker) Regiment and several hundred, mostly Shiite, Iraqi police officers....

Englisgh Version:********************************************* Yesterday a joint US-Iraqi force with help from local anti-al-Qaeda awakening fighters in the Adhamiyah district in northeastern Baghdad found and disarmed more than 20 vehicles rigged as VBIEDs in a parking lot. This is a great find by any standards but the timing makes it all the more significant.The significance comes not only from the quantity of bombs, cars and other resources that al-Qaeda has been denied the ability to use. It comes from the amount of frustration they have to deal with right now that all these preparations and resources are lost. What makes me think...

The same day Multinational Forces Iraq reported it had killed Tha’ir Malik, the emir of Tarmiyah, Coalition forces fought a major battle against the terror network in the city. Twenty-five al Qaeda in Iraq operatives were killed and 21 captured after Coalition forces conducted a series of raids west of the central Sunni city searching for senior al Qaeda leaders. The term “Coalition forces” in Multinational Forces Iraq press releases usually is referring to Task Force 88 or The Task Force, the special operations hunter-killer teams assigned to dismantle al Qaeda in Iraq's leadership. The scope of the battle and...

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - The U.S. military is sending 3,000 soldiers home from Diyala province, the second large unit to leave Iraq as troop levels are cut after a 30,000-strong "surge" earlier this year. Soldiers from the 3rd Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division, will not be replaced by a new unit when they leave the ethnically and religiously mixed province north of Baghdad by January, military officials said on Tuesday. Instead, troops from the larger 4th Striker Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division, located near Baghdad, will take over the area, said military spokeswoman Major Peggy Kageleiry. "Most of the (brigade) will...

BAGHDAD - Former Sunni insurgents asked the United States to stay away, and then ambushed members of Al Qaeda in Iraq, killing 18 in a battle that raged for hours north of Baghdad, an ex-insurgent leader and Iraqi police said yesterday. more stories like this A Baghdad neighborhood returns to lifeThirty bodies found in mass graves near BaghdadThousands of Baghdad residents returning as violence dropsFriday Iraqi death toll near record low US helicopter opens fire in Iraq The Islamic Army in Iraq sent advance word to Iraqi police requesting that US helicopters keep out of the area because its fighters...

The invasion in Iraq was always a gamble in that it gave al Qaeda a cause to fight the "crusaders" in the heart of the Middle East. Osama bin Laden has called the U.S. a "paper tiger" in the past, and predicted the U.S. would shy away from combat in Iraq once the fighting got tough. And the United States came perilously close to a forced withdraw from Iraq at the beginning of 2007, but changed its counterinsurgency strategy and encountered dramatic results. The upside of the Iraq invasion was that an open confrontation with al Qaeda in Iraq forced...

Bronxville, N.Y. - In yet another sign of trouble for Al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden publicly conceded that his like-minded militants in Iraq "made mistakes." In an audiotape broadcast by Al Jazeera this week, he sounds deeply anxious about the survival of Al Qaeda in Iraq – a group that is largely independent of his own organization but adheres to a similar ideology. Al Qaeda's top leader appealed to Sunni Arab tribes and other armed Iraqi Sunni groups to stop fighting Al Qaeda members and unite against the real enemy – the US-led coalition. Al Qaeda in Iraq faces growing...

Al Qaeda in Iraq on the Run Maybe the U.S. Congress will save it? By Clifford D. May Al Qaeda is on the horns of a dilemma. Last month, some 30 of its senior leaders in Iraq were killed or captured. Now, Osama bin Laden faces a tough decision: Send reinforcements to Iraq in an attempt to regain the initiative? That risks losing those combatants, too — and that could seriously diminish his global organization. But the alternative is equally unappealing: accept defeat in Iraq, the battlefield bin Laden has called central to the struggle al Qaeda is waging against...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President George W. Bush's request for nearly $200 billion more to fund the Iraq war will not be approved unless it is linked to a plan to bring home U.S. combat troops by January 2009, the head of the House appropriations committee said on Tuesday. ADVERTISEMENT Rep. David Obey, a Wisconsin Democrat, told a news conference his panel would not even consider the war funding request until early 2008, by which time he estimates funding for military operations will have run out. Defense Secretary Robert Gates recently outlined the request to Congress.Obey said he and other Democrats...

WASHINGTON - The House takes up legislation today that would require President Bush to submit a plan for a withdrawal of troops from Iraq. ADVERTISEMENT The bill would require the administration to report to Congress on the status of redeployment plans in 60 days. Follow up reports would be required every 90 days thereafter.Initially, Democratic leaders considered the bill too mild and instead focused on tougher measures that ordered troops home this fall. But those measures didn't pick up enough Republican support. The latest bill doesn't set any timetable for a withdrawal and Republican leaders have said they will not...

Media And War: Ever since the Sept. 10 testimony of Gen. David Petraeus, we've heard less and less from the mainstream media about the war in Iraq. The old adage "no news is good news" has never been truer. That the media are no longer much interested in Iraq is a sure sign things are going well there. Instead, they're talking about the presidential campaign, or Burma, or global warming, or . . . whatever. Why? Simply put, the news from Iraq has been quite positive, as Petraeus related in his report to Congress. Consider: • On Monday came news...

More than 30,000 tribal members in Iraq have come forward to work with U.S. and Iraqi forces over the past six months, a phenomenon that is spreading beyond Anbar province to Baghdad and other regions of the country, according to U.S. commanders. The Iraqi government, at the urging of U.S. authorities, this month ordered Iraqi army and police units to integrate the volunteers into their operations. "That is huge. This gives them the approval that we are looking for," said Brig. Gen. John F. Campbell, deputy commander of the U.S. military in Baghdad. However, questions remain over whether alliances with...

Iraq violent death rates 'plunge' Figures show reduction of violence, but it is unclear how long it will last The number of Iraqi civilians killed per month in bombings and shootings has fallen to the lowest level this year, the Iraqi government says. In September, 884 civilians were killed by violence, less than half the figure for August, the government said. The BBC's Jon Brain in Baghdad says the figures suggest the so-called surge involving 30,000 extra US troops is having some success. September also saw the lowest number of US troops killed for more than a year. SEPTEMBER...

By Bob Woodward Washington Post Staff Writer Monday, September 17, 2007; A03 Alan Greenspan, the former Federal Reserve chairman, said in an interview that the removal of Saddam Hussein had been "essential" to secure world oil supplies, a point he emphasized to the White House in private conversations before the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Greenspan, who was the country's top voice on monetary policy at the time Bush decided to go to war in Iraq, has refrained from extensive public comment on it until now, but he made the striking comment in a new memoir out today that "the Iraq...

General Petraeus’ testimony on Capitol Hill last week undermined numerous Democratic talking points about the progress of the war and the situation on the ground in Iraq. But through their own behavior before and during the hearings, the Democrats themselves were responsible for exploding one of their most cherished myths: Republicans were the partisans prone to a particularly nasty form of character assassination – that is, challenging the patriotism of those who disagree with them. Democrats have long claimed to be victims of Republican challenges to their love of country. As early as 2003, John Kerry told the Associated Press,...

INDIANAPOLIS -- As hundreds of Republican activists from a dozen Midwestern states gathered Friday to talk about the 2008 election, one of the more divisive topics amid the vendor booths and candidate tables was a senior GOP senator's call for President Bush to bring some troops home from Iraq by Christmas. Many delegates were angry with Sen. John Warner of Virginia, a former Navy secretary and one of Congress' most respected military voices. They said he seemed to be undercutting Bush, selling short recent reports of military successes and pre-empting a mid-September report to Congress from top military and diplomatic...

WASHINGTON: US President George W. Bush signaled Saturday his unwillingness to consider early US troop reductions in Iraq, saying new offensive operations there were just in their "early stages." The statement, made in his weekly radio address, followed a fervent plea by John Warner, the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, who publicly asked the president to initiate by September 15 at least a symbolic drawdown of US military forces from Iraq. Warner, a former secretary of the Navy and a widely respected authority on military affairs, suggested Thursday the president bring home up to 5,000 US troops...

The following letter was sent to Senator Warner after his comments urging President Bush to start an Iraq troop withdrawal: Senator Warner, It wasn’t that long ago when I saw you and a whole bunch of other Senators sitting around the table at the confirmation hearing of General Petraeus. One after another, you and others uttered your “words of wisdom” and wished the General “Godspeed” I wondered what the General was thinking at that moment, whether he shared my suspicion that he was being sent there TO FAIL, thereby giving you and others a Get Out of Iraq Free Card....