AP: ‘US now winning Iraq war that seemed lost’

The Associated Press headline in this post’s title falls way short of properly characterizing the article’s content (also saved here for future reference), and there are a few historically revisionist assertions (e.g., “The premature declaration by the Bush administration of ‘Mission Accomplished” in May 2003″; the fact is that “Bush had been correct in that the mission had been accomplished. The military effort to remove Saddam Hussein and liberate Iraq was over”).

But there’s a time for extensive critique, and this isn’t it.

I will simply note some of what Robert Burns and Robert H. Reid, two “analysts” representing an organization that has poured tens of thousands of reporter-hours into creating the current climate of negative US opinion about operations in Iraq, and about the commander-in-chief who has seen it through to this point, felt compelled to write — released on a Saturday, perhaps to minimize the embarrassment — to salvage what remains of that organization’s shattered credibility:

The United States is now winning the war that two years ago seemed lost.

Limited, sometimes sharp fighting and periodic terrorist bombings in Iraq are likely to continue, possibly for years. But the Iraqi government and the U.S. now are able to shift focus from mainly combat to mainly building the fragile beginnings of peace — a transition that many found almost unthinkable as recently as one year ago.

Despite the occasional bursts of violence, Iraq has reached the point where the insurgents, who once controlled whole cities, no longer have the clout to threaten the viability of the central government.

….. Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, told the AP on Thursday that the insurgency as a whole has withered to the point where it is no longer a threat to Iraq’s future.

“Very clearly, the insurgency is in no position to overthrow the government or, really, even to challenge it,” Crocker said. “It’s actually almost in no position to try to confront it. By and large, what’s left of the insurgency is just trying to hang on.”

Shiite militias, notably the Mahdi Army of radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, have lost their power bases in Baghdad, Basra and other major cities. An important step was the routing of Shiite extremists in the Sadr City slums of eastern Baghdad this spring — now a quiet though not fully secure district.

Al-Sadr and top lieutenants are now in Iran.

….. The underlying dynamics in Iraqi society that blew up the U.S. military’s hopes for an early exit, shortly after the fall of Baghdad in April 2003, have changed in important ways in recent months.

Systematic sectarian killings have all but ended in the capital, in large part because of tight security and a strategy of walling off neighborhoods purged of minorities in 2006.

That has helped establish a sense of normalcy in the streets of the capital.

….. Beyond that, there is something in the air in Iraq this summer.

In Baghdad, parks are filled every weekend with families playing and picnicking with their children. That was unthinkable only a year ago, when the first, barely visible signs of a turnaround emerged.

Now a moment has arrived for the Iraqis to try to take those positive threads and weave them into a lasting stability.

…. Army Col. Tom James, a brigade commander who is on his third combat tour in Iraq, explains the new calm this way:

“We’ve put out the forest fire. Now we’re dealing with pop-up fires.”

It’s not the end of fighting. It looks like the beginning of a perilous peace.

If AP feels it has to own up to all of this, you can imagine how much better the entirety of the reality on the ground must be.

At one point, Burns and Reid seem to advocate changing the scope of military’s from that of “combatants” to “peacekeepers,” which makes me think that they would like to see the blue helmets of the UN replace our guys and gals. My response: Nuh-uh.

But I digress, and would prefer to echo the sentiments of NewsBusters colleague Noel Sheppard, who wrote the following this afternoon:

Forgive my foolishness, for more important than ANYTHING related to this story is that our troops in Iraq are increasingly less and less in harm’s way, including my two nephews that are there.

Godspeed to America’s finest that have dutifully and selflessly represented our nation despite the lack of support they deserved from the left and the media. And may this lead to a safer world for ourselves, our children, and our grandchildren.