AQI

Everyone, from Blackfive on down, is talking about the new Washington Post story.

For the perhaps three folks living under a rock, let me summarize.

AQI is getting its butt kicked. We have been rolling up networks. Suicide bombings are down, casualties and civilian deaths are down, and General Odierno is saying things like, "They are less and less coordinated, more and more fragmented."

That's general-speak for "they aren't what they used to be."

Some folks want to break out the party hats and announce we beat Al-Qaeda in Iraq. That's more than a little problematic.

1) It only takes a small cell to pull off a dramatic attack that makes us look like fools.

2) The American Left is looking for an excuse to pull out of Iraq. Don't give it to them.

3) Al-Qaeda in Iraq is hardly the only element of the interlinking problems in Iraq.

Some of Iraq's problems are slowly being fixed, and a major step towards fighting the factionalizing trends was taken recently by a Shiite cleric.

But the problems of Iraq, while not as large as some media outlets would have you believe, are not insignificant either.

This report and the recent trends are hopeful, and support what I have been saying about the overall direction of this war since my first tour. But they aren't the end.

The problems remain, and there are folks at home desperately driven to make these trends reverse for their own political gain. If the trends won't reverse, they will simply repeat lies over and over again, as their sycophants cheer and the simple-minded are fooled into believing them. But after a while, it is going to become too much even for the leftist media to cover up.