Preview of Surge Report

Ed Morrissey of Captains Quarters noticed an interview that General Petraeus gave The Australian newspaper last week where he drops some hints as to what will be in his report...

David Petraeus, the top US commander in Iraq, said the build-up of American forces in Baghdad since late January had produced positive outcomes. These included the killing or capture of al-Qa'ida fighters, causing the terrorist group to lose influence with local Sunnis.

The strategic gains against insurgents would lead to a changed and possibly longer-term role for Australian troops, shifting from security operations to a focus on training Iraqi soldiers and police.

General Petraeus told The Australian during a face-to-face interview at his Baghdad headquarters there had been a 75 per cent reduction in religious and ethnic killings since last year, a doubling in the seizure of insurgents' weapons caches between January and August, a rise in the number of al-Qa'ida "kills and captures" and a fall in the number of coalition deaths from roadside bombings.

"We say we have achieved progress, and we are obviously going to do everything we can to build on that progress and we believe al-Qa'ida is off balance at the very least," he said.

The Captain notes;

How have things changed in Iraq? Petraeus compared the previous condition of Ramadi to Stalingrad. The general told the newspaper that having to stay on defense had taken its toll on American strength and had emboldened the enemy. Switching to offense has changed everything, and AQI simply cannot contend with a modern army with initiative on its side.

That's not the only progress that the general will report. Petraeus will tell Congress that sectarian violence has dropped 75% since last December. He will also call that one of the most important measures of success, which makes sense, as the sectarian violence had been the biggest obstacle to political reconciliation.

Expect more Democrats to abandon the white flag brigade and embrace the surge as their own idea and that they never had any doubt that it would succeed.



UPDATE: Ed Morrissey catches Harry Reid in desperation mode already.

The final straw for Reid came when he dropped the war debate entirely. He figured that Iraq would get worse and the pressure on Republicans would increase. Unfortunately, Reid miscalculated again. The end of the debate gave the surge some breathing space, and the perception of its success got shaped by actual facts and news rather than Democrat spin.

Now Reid wants to cut a deal, and he's desperate to get it done while he has any credibility left at all. He's broken from his hard-line stance about timetables for withdrawal, and now he's just talking about using back-door methods to get modest troop reductions with no firm date at all to end the mission. After Petraeus reports to Congress on the military progress from the surge and on the political reform agreement engineered by Maliki, Reid will have little standing to declare the war "lost" as he did just a few months ago.