Troop surge in Iraq is working despite jeering from Democrats

NEW YORK — Though largely dismissed by the Democratic left, America's "surge" policy is paying attractive dividends. Al-Qaida in Iraq is in retreat, violence is down and political reconciliation is up.

In a 16-page letter that U.S. soldiers found last October near Baghdad, AQI leader Abu Tariq complained that his 600-man force had dwindled to 20 terrorists.

"We were mistreated, cheated and betrayed by some of our brothers," he moaned, as Sunnis swapped AQI for the U.S. This shift "created panic, fear and the unwillingness to fight," another AQI chief whined in his own missive discovered in November near Samarra. His network, he said, suffered "total collapse."

Terrorism is collapsing across Iraq. In February 2007, when President Bush ordered 30,000 additional troops into Iraq — as Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., cheered and Democratic Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and Barack Obama of Illinois jeered — only 8 percent of Baghdad's neighborhoods were rated secure. That number is now 75 percent. In 2006, coalition troops defused 2,662 terrorist weapons caches. In 2007, they neutralized 6,956. Since June, attacks on U.S. soldiers have slid 60 percent. Meanwhile, sectarian violence fell 90 percent from January to December 2007, sparing Iraqi and U.S. lives alike.

"In a sense, Iraqis have been 're-liberated' from al-Qaida," says Pete Hegseth, executive director of Vets for Freedom, America's largest organization of veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. "This time, I believe they want their country back for good."

For years, terrorists repeatedly bombed Iraq's oil pipelines, fouling the ground, forcing inky columns of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere and frying the fledgling republic's oil revenues. Pipelines that the Army Corps of Engineers has shielded helped push Iraq's December 2007 daily oil output to 2.475 million barrels — 96 percent of pre-war capacity. This year's daily goal is 3 million barrels, or 16 percent above pre-war levels. Last month, the Iraqi Oil Ministry announced that it was speaking with Royal Dutch Petroleum (aka Shell) and four international companies about investing in Iraq's petroleum sector to drag it from the 1970s into the 21st century.

This far-brighter security climate is depriving the Democratic left of its last anti-surge talking point. As House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., told CNN on Feb. 10, "The gains have not produced the desired effect, which is the reconciliation of Iraq. This is a failure."