Seventy-five tribal leaders gathered and vowed to fight al Qaeda in Iraq, its Islamic State front, and other insurgent groups.

Raids by Coalition forces resulted in the capture of 20 al Qaeda operatives. A series of raids near Taji in Salahadin province resulted in 16 al Qaeda captured, including “a foreign terrorist suspected of involvement in the May 2007 Samarra suicide vehicle-borne improvised explosive device attack,” while another four operatives were captured near Balad.

Two more raids in the north in Niwena province resulted in the capture of six al Qaeda operatives on July 21 and 22. The July 21 operation in the village of Bazran in Mosul resulted in the capture of five suspected terrorists. The July 22 operation resulted in the capture of an IED and kidnapping financier. In both cases, the Iraqi Army worked with U.S. Special Forces.

On July 18, U.S. Special Forces worked with elements of the newly formed 11th Iraqi Army Division and captured two members of al Qaeda’s Islamic State of Iraq. The two insurgents are believed to have been behind a July 18 roadside bombing that killed U.S. soldiers and an Iraqi interpreter in eastern Baghdad.

Elsewhere in Baghdad, U.S. troops killed three insurgents while they were emplacing a roadside bomb in the Rashid district on July 21. U.S. troops are currently in the process of clearing operations in the Rashid district. Also, U.S. forces captured seven insurgents during a raid in the eastern neighborhood of Zafaraniya.

This is the sort of info that the MSM ought be reporting to the American people on a regular basis, along with it’s daily suicide bomb reports and coalition/civilian body count.

[HT:  The Weekly Standard]

The execrable political hack John Kerry has taken a page from the playbook of the much more nuanced and, quite frankly, likable political hack, Bill Clinton when going on record as saying that there was no “bloodbath” after we abandoned Vietnam and that survivors of the “re-education camps” are doing rather remarkably well these days.

As the American public educates itself up, over and around the news blockade placed by the MSM, it has become necessary for the cut and run Dems to explain that the cuttin’ and runnin’ they brought about in Vietnam did not result in anything particularly ugly or nasty, lest we realize the same will be in store if the Dems have their way on Iraq.

At least 165,000 people perished in these re-education camps, but to his credit Kerry did specifically note he was talking about some of the “survivors.”  Out of curiosity, how are the non-survivors doing, John?  Perhaps you can look into how survivors of the Nazi concentration camps were doing 30 or so years later and maybe we would realize that Auschwitz and Birkenau weren’t on balance all that bad.

Were the millions who tried to escape Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia and either perished or ended up in refugee camps (“boat people”)  better off after we bailed on Vietnam?  How better off are the survivors of the Khmer Rouge’s “killing fields”?  Were the 1.7 t0 2.3 million that were murdered (including women and young children) and dumped into mass graves better off?  Not so much, I’d say.

But I suppose it depends upon what your definition of “bloodbath” is.

More evidence that the tide is turning in Iraq. Couldn’t find this story in my local paper, however.

UPDATE: Americans are nevertheless beginning to realize progress is being made despite the fact that this news is typically buried beneath the “Lindsay Lohan Report”. By the way, since when has a 7 point increase been described as “inching up”?

In the past five months, how have conditions in Iraq changed?

DP: Well, obviously, we have been surging our forces during that time. We have added five Army brigade combat teams, two Marine battalions, and a Marine expeditionary unit, and some enablers, as they’re called. And over the last month, that surge of forces has turned into a surge of offensive operations. And we have achieved what we believe is a reasonable degree of tactical momentum on the ground, gains against the principal near-term threat, al Qaeda-Iraq, and also gains against what is another near-term threat, and also potentially the long term threat, Shia militia extremists as well. As you may have heard, that today, we announced the capture of the senior Iraqi leader of al Qaeda-Iraq, and that follows in recent weeks the detention of some four different emirs, as they’re called, the different area leaders of al Qaeda, six different foreign fighter facilitators, and a couple dozen other leaders, in addition to killing or capturing hundreds of other al Qaeda-Iraq operatives.

Now you’re due to make a report back in September, I don’t know if it’s early, mid or late September, General Petraeus, is that enough time to really get a fix on how the surge is progressing?

DP: Well, I have always said that we will have a sense by that time of basically, of how things are going, have we been able to achieve progress on the ground, where have their been shortfalls, and so forth. And I think that is a reasonable amount of time to have had all the forces on the ground, again, for about three months, to have that kind of sense. But that’s all it is going to be. But we do intend, Ambassador Ryan Crocker, the ambassador here, and I, do very much intend to provide as comprehensive and as forthright an assessment as we can at that time of the progress that has been achieved, and where we’ve fallen short.

General, what about the losses on the enemy? You mentioned that hundreds of al Qaeda fighters have been killed in the last couple of months, but are they suffering losses in the thousands every month? Or is it hundred, two hundred? What kind of force reduction’s going on there?

DP: Yeah, as you know, we try to avoid body counting, but inevitably, obviously, it is something we keep track of, because we’re trying to have some sense of the damage that we are doing to al Qaeda-Iraq, its affiliates, other Sunni insurgent groups, and also certainly to the Shia militia extremist elements. And the answer to that in a general sense is that they are losing many, many hundreds of their, of these different elements each month, certainly since the onset of the surge.

The Democrats would rather throw media event pajama parties than pay attention to what the commander on the ground in Iraq has to say about real progress being made there.  But as I said before, the last thing the Dems want is for any positive news to come out of Iraq because they are now so heavily invested in defeat.  They can’t afford to wait for September for fear that Gen. Petraeus will provide the American public with a not so gloomy assessment which would place them in the position of either admitting they were wrong or seeking to discredit the honorable General.