I about spilled my coffee when I opened up the newspaper this morning and read this headline from an Associated Press story: "Residents of Baghdad Sense Violence Easing." BAGHDAD - Shop owners long afraid of Baghdad's bombings and shootings are keeping their stores open later these days on the main street of Jadidah district, saying they feel safer after weeks of a beefed-up U.S. security crackdown. It is one sign that many Iraqis sense violence is easing somewhat in Baghdad as U.S. forces fight to put down militants in the capital and areas on the city's doorstep to the north and south. . . . But Baghdadis' sense of lessening violence may come from a ...

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We are all now very familiar with the latest installment of obvious idiocy of Rosie O'Donnell. Here it is, if you somehow missed it: Okay, so Rosie is not exactly Susan B. Anthony. As Marshall McLuhan once said, "moral indignation is a standard strategy for endowing the idiot with dignity." But lost in the controversy of her screaming match with Elisabeth Hasselbeck is a statement that reveals a good deal about the loony Left's mindset about the war. Rosie actually believes that American soldiers have killed 655,000 innocent Iraqi civilians since the start of the war. The invasion of Iraq began on March 19, 2003. That is 1531 days ago. If Rosie is right, the American military has itself killed about 2% of Iraq's total population in about 4 years, murdering an average of 425 innocent Iraq civilians every single day. This is lunacy, of course. The most reasonable estimates are that between 70K and 76K Iraqi civilians have been killed during the war, not 650,000, and there is no good reason to attribute any significant fraction of those numbers to American military forces. Imbedded reporters have confirmed the great care that American soldiers take to minimize non-combatant casualties, and it is well accepted that most of the civilian casualties are the product of terrorists and the so-called "insurgents." But friends, I must say that I am beginning to understand our opposition.

Bing West, a former Marine and former assistant secretary of defense, reports in this month's National Review on Dead Tree (subscription required) that the surge is working. During this month-long visit, I have accompanied twelve Iraqi and American units in Anbar Province (including Habbaniyah, Haditha, Ramadi, Saqwaniyah, and the Zidon) and Baghdad (including Rusafa, Sadr City, Azamiyiah, Khalidiah, and Ghazaliyah). I have visited these areas many times since 2003, and it appears to me that, in both Anbar and Baghdad, the war-fighting strategies are now sound and clear. This should not be taken for granted; the U.S. strategy in Iraq has been erratic. Iraq’s 26 million traumatized inhabitants have few leaders, are rent by religious and ethnic antagonisms, ...