Cautious optimism in Iraq?

Interesting take from the AP guys, but I wonder how much of the whole picture this presents, really. It sounds like a heavily enforced "peace" that will take a lot longer to fully catch on.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/I/IRAQ_WINNING_THE_WAR?SITE=FLPEJ&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

BAGHDAD (AP) -- The United States is now winning the war that two years ago seemed lost.

Limited, sometimes sharp fighting and periodic terrorist bombings in Iraq are likely to continue, possibly for years. But the Iraqi government and the U.S. now are able to shift focus from mainly combat to mainly building the fragile beginnings of peace - a transition that many found almost unthinkable as recently as one year ago.

 

It's the AP. Their political coverage is a fucking joke.

 

"Cautious optimism" could have been the same term used in 1780 also .

 

I like how this thing is going exactly like the movie The Battle of Algiers.

 

They are still at a couple hours of electricity a day.

 

I was cautiously optimistic when we invaded Cambodia.

 

Without debating the merit of the argument of peace in Iraq - where is the attribution?

Is the reader supposed to believe the reporter's opinion? Is the AP now the "voice of God?"

I know several major newspapers that attempt to get away with this trick but the reporter is that, reporting what is happening. Get someone, even a political hack or military spokesman saying this not writing as if your word is the Gospel.

 

It was listed as "analysis" but I wondered, too, just who the real sources were.

 

Now even McCain has joined Obama's Iraq position:

"Timetables was the buzzword for those that wanted to get out," McCain scolded Romney at a Jan. 30 debate at the Reagan Library in Simi Valley, Calif.

How the (time)tables have turned.

During a Friday interview with CNN, McCain called a 16-month withdrawal from Iraq "a pretty good timetable."

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/TheNote/story?id=3105455&page=1

Political expedience anyone?

 

I didn't think the story lacked for attribution, actually. It's well established that we bought off the Sunnis and that the Mahdi Army went underground. Those are two vital factors in the reduction in violence. The surge helped, as did the fact that (despite what those in power would want you to believe) the overwhelming majority of insurgents weren't radical Islamists, but members of ethnic factions locked in a power struggle. At a certain point, it made more sense for them to stop fighting, cut deals and come to the table.

But as the story notes, it's a tenuous peace at best. Once we leave (whenever that is), we'll see how sturdy it is.

 

No shit?