Victories in the field denote losses in newsrooms; reasons unclear.
One British analyst, using the example of the British drawdown of forces in southern Iraq, suggested that the lower numbers may mean that American troops are irrelevant to the many conflicts racking Iraq: ethnic cleansing of neighborhoods in Baghdad, massive bombings of religious minorities by Sunni Muslim extremists in northern Iraq and Shiite-on-Shiite-Muslim violence in southern Iraq.
Instead, he suggested, Iraq’s armed factions and politicians already are thinking beyond the troop buildup.
"Everyone is preparing for what happens" after U.S. forces leave, said James Denselow, an Iraq specialist at the London-based Chatham House, a foreign affairs research institute.
In my eyes this is an end point of the beginning of success in Iraq. Petreaus has things moving in the right direction, sectarian violence is being directed inward as more Iraqi citizens reject the sectarian violence and AIG.
I see "beyond the surge" as code for after the US leaves Iraq which brings us full circle, in liberal minds, as dealing with a civil war which is bs. Liberals refuse to deal with Syria and Iran in their equations of Iraq, just as they did with Russia and China in Vietnam.
For a bonus read the comments. There are some beauts, especially those that see this as a "cheerleading" piece for the White House. Yep, at McClatchy, that'd be a given.
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