What does it tell us if hundreds of thousands of Iraqi refugees are returning to Iraq?

Update: I guess we can add another metric to the mix of indicators showing a path to victory in Iraq:

Civilian casualties are down 60% across Iraq since June, Smith said, and the figure for the capital is even better — 75%.

60-75% reduction since June, imagine that. Some people just can’t let go of their dreams of an American defeat. – end update

The liberal news media like to pretend they are experts in everything. They can barely grasp most things in life, let alone master them, butt they have their egos to prop themselves up – so they wax expert on all things. OK, but it is becoming laughable as the news media continue to pretend the Iraq war is not coming to a successful conclusion. One obvious sign, which has been evident for months, has been the steady decline in violence. OK, so the media finally woke up after 4 months of getting beaten on the head on that one statistic.

But there is another statistic which is also important – the number of terrorists killed and captured, and the amount of weapons caches seized and destroyed. This information is also regularly released to the math challenged journalists. As the violence has gone down, these other metrics have been rising:

On Nov. 5, the forces under Hertling’s command, in combination with Iraqi troops, launched a long-planned operation called Iron Hammer, which is targeting al Qaeda cells in a region of northern Iraq the size of Pennsylvania.

Hertling said the operation has been tremendously successful so far, seizing 400 al Qaeda terrorists and other extremists, as well as 79 arms caches, including “ammunition, homemade explosives, rocket-propelled grenades, about 500 RPGs, 50 RPG launchers, a variety of machine guns, over 100 heavy and light machine guns.”

Hertling said that of the 400 terrorists his troops have detained, 200 are still undergoing questioning about the al Qaeda cells operating in the region.

“They are giving us some very good intelligence on the makeup of those cells — who the leaders are — and we’re continuing to use that information for intelligence-driven raids to continue to go after those organizations,” he said.

About 22 percent of the arms caches discovered by Iron Hammer, Hertling said, were discovered because of tips from local citizens.

These numbers come from just one region of Iraq. I lost an article in the sea of good stories I scan to see which ones I want to post, but it noted the amount of material discovered this year is already double the amount found last year. And the snowball effect of the intel being captured. It seems the Surge was not some random force deployment, but it actually exploited a strategic map of terrorist Zarqawi (the al-Qaeda In Iraq leader killed last year) to basically roll up al-Qaeda and its logistics train:

A map drawn by Al Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi — who was killed last year by U.S. forces — turned up last December in an Al Qaeda safe house and essentially gave U.S. war planners insight into the terrorist group’s methods for moving explosives, fighters and money into Baghdad.

“The map essentially laid out how Al Qaeda controlled Baghdad. And they did it through four belts that surrounded the city, and these belts controlled access to the city for reinforcements and weapons and money,” said Maj. Gen. Bob Scales, a FOX News contributor who recently visited Iraq.

“And [U.S.-led forces] simply made the decision to reduce these belts one at a time, and essentially what that did was it choked off Al Qaeda’s access to the city. And once that was done, Al Qaeda had no alternative but to leave the city, to leave the belts and to retreat into the city of Baquba,” Scales said.

In Baquba they found a death trap. But this is not the only major sign we can find that the war is ending. The most critical sign is the apparent signal to the Iraqi refugees who fled the country that it is now OK to return home. And they are returning in huge numbers from Syria:

The figures are hard to estimate precisely but the process could involve hundreds of thousands of people. The numbers are certainly large enough, as we report today, for a mass convoy to be planned next week as Iraqis who had opted for exile in Syria return to their homeland. It is one of the most striking signs that not only has violence in Baghdad and adjacent provinces decreased dramatically in recent months, but confidence in the economic and political future of Iraq has risen sharply. Nor is this movement the action of men and women who could easily reverse course and turn back again. Tighter visa restrictions imposed by Damascus mean that those who are returning to Iraq cannot assume that they could quickly retreat again to Syria if that suited them. This is, for many, a one-way decision. It represents a vote of confidence in Iraq.

Why are hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, many with Baathist ties and one would assume some power and money, be streaming back into Iraq all of a sudden? What signal was given through the tribal or sectarian grapevine things in Iraq were quieting down enough to bring families home and to start their lives up again? These people may be looking at the sea of news stories coming out of Iraq on the progress. But given this mass exodus from Syria I would gather much more is at work here.

But whatever the reason, we now see three major indicators the war on Iraq is ending. We see huge drops offs in violence, violence now laid solely at the feet of al-Qaeda. Every bomb that kills Iraqi Muslims is now an attack from al-Qaeda. No one is being duped by the liberal media spin this is the fault of America. We see large numbers of dead and captured terrorists. The rest are fleeing.

From the terrorist cells we find we gain a wealth of intel which leads us to more terrorists, weapons and intel. We see a wave of concerned citizens leading us to the terrorists and their caches. We see the ever increasing amounts of weapons being seized and destroyed.

And now we see this massive migration of Iraqis coming home. These are not the signs of an endless war, an endless quagmire. These are the signs of a conflict ending. And they are all pointing to a huge US-Iraqi victory and a stunning defeat for Bin Laden’s Butchers.