As May 2008 went into the record books as the month with the lowest fatality levels of the entire war, the people of the world awoke this morning to a series of news reports covering the success of Iraq. Probably the most interesting was an editorial in the Washington Post today:

The Iraqi Upturn
Don’t look now, but the U.S.-backed government and army may be winning the war.

THERE’S BEEN a relative lull in news coverage and debate about Iraq in recent weeks — which is odd, because May could turn out to have been one of the most important months of the war. While Washington’s attention has been fixed elsewhere, military analysts have watched with astonishment as the Iraqi government and army have gained control for the first time of the port city of Basra and the sprawling Baghdad neighborhood of Sadr City, routing the Shiite militias that have ruled them for years and sending key militants scurrying to Iran. At the same time, Iraqi and U.S. forces have pushed forward with a long-promised offensive in Mosul, the last urban refuge of al-Qaeda. So many of its leaders have now been captured or killed that U.S. Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker, renowned for his cautious assessments, said that the terrorists have “never been closer to defeat than they are now.”

Iraq passed a turning point last fall when the U.S. counterinsurgency campaign launched in early 2007 produced a dramatic drop in violence and quelled the incipient sectarian war between Sunnis and Shiites. Now, another tipping point may be near, one that sees the Iraqi government and army restoring order in almost all of the country, dispersing both rival militias and the Iranian-trained “special groups” that have used them as cover to wage war against Americans. It is — of course — too early to celebrate; though now in disarray, the Mahdi Army of Moqtada al-Sadr could still regroup, and Iran will almost certainly seek to stir up new violence before the U.S. and Iraqi elections this fall. Still, the rapidly improving conditions should allow U.S. commanders to make some welcome adjustments — and it ought to mandate an already-overdue rethinking by the “this-war-is-lost” caucus in Washington, including Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.).

The one thing I admire about my hometown paper the Washington Post is they know when to give up the ghost and report the news. They exist in DC so they tend to be less biased than the NY and LA Times. But the changes in Iraq are so stunning the LA Times even noted how May marked the lowest level of US fatalities in a large story. Some propaganda outlets, like the AP, have been trying to state the number of fatalities is two higher than the actual number by including Georgian troop casualties in the US numbers, making it appear that May is not the lowest record of the entire war, but only goes 4 years back. At least today we can easily see who reports news and who twists the news. If it is not reporting the fact that May is the lowest month for fatalities ever, then the source is not a fact-concerned source. For example the French News Service AFP gets the number right today while the AP somehow missed it.

Probably the silliest ‘report’ came from the BBC, which doesn’t know what the true number is and only vaguely admits last month’s figures are the result of The Surge and The Awakening taking hold last year:

US military deaths in Iraq are said to have fallen to their lowest monthly level for four years, after about 20 soldiers were reported killed in May.

…

But our correspondent adds that the overall trend of the violence since late last summer has been downwards.

He says the US troop “surge” was clearly a big factor, as was the trend within the Sunni community to turn against al-Qaeda and other Islamic militant groups.

The withdrawal of the additional US troops brought in last year for the surge is expected to be completed by July.

Emphasis mine. The BBC won’t even go on record noting the current state of Iraq is linked to The Surge, they only allow this is the view of their ‘correspondent’. What they did note was the fact that these conditions allow us to bring our troops home as victors in the war, unlike the Democrat Congressional plan to bring them home as shamed failures and simply pretend they were victorious.

As the NY Post notes (and so did the LA Times), there are still challenges ahead. But there is a bloody and deadly reminder from the last few years of what failure will bring back to the Muslim Street of Iraq, and I think those memories of Islamo Fascists atrocities, will provide a lot of impetus to the various Iraqi factions to succeed in the end. Time will tell.

Let’s look on the bright side, when Obama takes his trip to Iraq it won’t be that dangerous of a place to visit – thanks to the fact President George Bush refused to listen to the Surrendercrats in Congress.