The news media is too quiet. Are they stunned at how wrong they were in predicting defeat in Iraq? Are they going to become the Modern “Tokyo Rose” and spin propaganda for our enemies like the AP did this week in pretending there has not been a significant drop off in violence in Iraq? Is the SurrenderMedia going to destroy its journalistic credentials by ignoring success stories in Iraq because their egoes are to too fragile to admit they were wrong?

Apparently so. In this post from yesterday I listed numerous metrics collected from spatterings of reporting on the Iraq effort. I had to collect them from numerous articles where they were buried amongst a sea of non sequiturs are liberal handwringing. But the compilation of these items provides a clear picture of a major change in Iraq, one that favors US success. Well there are even more metrics out which clearly add to the picture and emphasize the breadth of the changes. First are some stunning numbers on terrorist materials discovered before they killed:

Army Lt. Gen. Ray Odierno, deputy to Iraq commander Gen. David Petraeus, gave these totals in a briefing last week for illegal arms, ammunition and explosives recovered in just the last two weeks of October: “Over 37,000 pounds of explosives, a thousand gallons of nitric acid used to make homemade explosives, over 2,000 artillery rounds and over 500 rockets, 136 assembled explosively formed penetrator IEDs (improvised explosive devices), along with 359 copper discs used to make more EFPs, and hundreds of rifles, grenades, anti-tank weapons and suicide vests.” Odierno attributed these arms captures largely to tips from local Iraqi civilians.

The numbers are stunning because the death and destruction this much ordinance and explosive could create. The fact the locals are increasing and expanding their fight against al-Qaeda and turning in Bin Laden’s thugs is also telling. But to see the change one year made (especially in light of the AP propaganda crap I linked to above) note the drop off in violence from a year ago, when events in Iraq were at their bleakest, not just to the last month of the Surge:

Iraqi civilian deaths are down more than 60 percent since their peak last December, from 3,000 that month to just over 700 in October. That’s still too many, of course, but in a nation of 25 million people beset with sectarian violence and terrorism, a two-thirds drop in civilian deaths is a remarkable achievement.

…

The incidence of mass-casualty terrorist attacks (truck bombs, car bombs and the like) in Iraq’s capital city is down 75 percent in recent months.

The second-ranking surge objective was pacifying Anbar province, formerly the heartland of the Sunni insurgency against U.S. forces and their Iraqi government allies. A year ago, Anbar was suffering more than 300 enemy attacks and hostile incidents per week. The number for the last week of October all across Anbar, Iraq’s largest province, was fewer than 30.

Huge changes. We seem to be past the tipping point as we see major drop offs in indicators such as number of IED attacks:

Eighteen U.S. troops in Iraq were killed by IEDS in October, a greater than 50 percent decline from last October, when 37 U.S. troops in Iraq were killed by IEDs. In total, according to an analysis by Cybercast News Service , there were 31 combat-related U.S. casualties in Iraq during October. That represents a 24 percent decline from September of this year (when there were 41 combat-related casualties) and a 66 percent decline from October of last year (when there were 91 combat-related U.S. casualties). The 18 U.S. casualties in Iraq in October that were caused by IEDs was also a decline from this September, when there were 22 IED-caused casualties.

Again, looking back over the year (37 to 18) verses the last month (22 to 18) gives the full trend, not a one month steady decline. The affects on Iraq is beginning to take hold as Iraqis realize this is not a lull, but a major shift in fighting al-Qaeda:

Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has gone on a rare walkabout in central Baghdad in the latest sign of the improving security situation in the war-ravaged Iraqi capital.

During his stroll around the landmark Abu Nuwas street, Maliki inspected newly-renovated gardens and chatted to residents and young soccer players, the premier’s office said on Tuesday.

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More than four years of violence has virtually closed the once-bustling street, with its lines of cinema halls, restaurants and shops now standing empty and deserted.

But, with a sharp decline in bloodletting since a “surge” in US troops from mid-February, Baghdad municipal authorities are now reviving Abu Nuwas and have already given the gardens a makeover.

Baghdadis are slowly returning to the gardens and officials say they expect shops to start reopening soon.

During his one-hour visit, Maliki met residents who expressed their grievances, while one mother asked for government aid to assist her son who lost his legs in an explosion.

Locals showered the premier with sweets while he took time out to pose for pictures with children.

“Security has been re-established and we have beaten the terrorists in many areas of Baghdad,” he told those who turned out to greet him. “Life is returning to normal. Terrorism is living its last days.”

The Surrendercrats and SurrenderMedia were abysmally wrong about Iraq and al-Qaeda. Their inability to distingish terrorist fanatics from American forces blinded them to the possibility American allies were the better choice for Iraqis between when faced with the options of western styled democracy or Jackbooted Islamic oppression. They just never even contemplated that al-Qaeda was so vile that the people they inflicted their atrocities on would rise up and tear them apart. Their hate of Bush consumed them and they were wrong.

And they are still wrong.