We've been breeding terrorist in Iraq??
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.
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