al-Qaeda has been attempting to salvage their losing effort in Iraq by increasing their body counts. They had some success in January in getting a slight up-tick in the US casualty number, as I noted in this post and as can be seen in the chart below from that post:

As the graph notes the change in January was simply to get back to the levels in November and October of 2007, which were near all time lows as well. The last 4 months in the chart had the following US deaths: 38, 37, 23, 38. One liberal ghoul who spends way to much of his time emailing me every story of a US death or some temporary setback in Iraq was all excited when he saw the death rate rise in January – truly one sick human being. Well the numbers are in for February and it is no surprise the death toll is heading back down again:

U.S. combat casualties in Iraq have declined by almost 64 percent from where there were in the same 28-day period of February last year, according to a Cybercast News Service analysis of U.S. Defense Department figures.

The Pentagon reported 25 combat casualties in the current month so far, compared with 69 in the same period last year.

As one can see from the chart the February number is going to show a return to record low levels of violence in Iraq. In January the average death toll for the previous 4 months was 34. This month that average over 4 months is 30.75. Over the last 3 months it is 28.67. The trend is clear – Iraq continues to progress towards peace as al-Qaeda is decimated. Each American death is a fathomless tragedy for a family and its community. But the fact is these sacrifices are of value to America and Humanity if they result in defeating al-Qaeda and freeing Iraq.

al-Qaeda is being rejected across Iraq and is being pushed out of its last enclaves. It is attempting to make a blood-soaked comeback, but it is failing. And in the end American and Iraqi losses will be memorialized together as the ones who saved Iraq from the brink of hell and Islamo Fascist rule. The ones who will be remembered as the scourge of the earth will be the thugs of al-Qaeda. Even in the ME it is clear al-Qaeda is the enemy of Islam and not its future. To have turned Iraqi Muslims from al-Qaeda’s fascist visions and to now have them as allies with us is definitely a victory worthy of sacrifice.