But The Surge Is Working

Getting the media to write a new story is about as easy as turning around a supertanker, but they really need to follow McClatchy's lead and look at Iraq in a new way:

After months of declining violence, February is certain to be the third straight month to see increases in the numbers of Baghdad residents killed in car bombings and suicide attacks.

....Monday, a suicide car bomber drove his car into the Baghdad residence of a prominent leader of the Anbar Salvation Council....Later, Sheik Ali Hathem al Suleiman al Duleimy, who was injured in the attack, went on Iraqi TV and declared war against his enemies. He said that his militia, many of whose members are paid by the United States, no longer would allow the U.S. or Iraqi government to interfere with its work.

This, of course, is part of the ebb and flow of violence over there which is a consequence of an uncertain political situation, and will continue this way no matter what "surge" we employ. On that political front, things are getting unquestionably worse:

The speaker of Iraq's fragmented parliament threatened Tuesday to disband the legislature, saying it is so riddled with distrust it appears unable to adopt the budget or agree on a law setting a date for provincial elections.

Disbanding parliament would prompt new elections within 60 days and further undermine Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's shaky government, which is limping along with nearly half of the 40 Cabinet posts vacant.

The disarray undermines the purpose of last year's U.S. troop "surge" — to bring down violence enough to allow the Iraqi government and parliament to focus on measures to reconcile differences among minority Sunnis and Kurds and the majority Shiites. Violence is down dramatically, but political progress languishes.

(Got the whole "undermines the purpose" thing right in the third paragraph! Nice job, AP.)

And as we've seen, violence is ticking back up in the midst of that languishing.

One thing we know is that the Republicans will not be blurring the lines on Iraq as we head into November. Their standard bearer John McCain thinks it's insulting to one's intelligence to question how long we're going to be spinning our wheels in Iraq. Actually, what's insulting is suggesting that everything's going so well over there when there is no progress whatsoever. But the Republicans are making the same bet on Iraq that they've always made. Yesterday, they purged their party of one of its few anti-war voices, giving a clear choice to the electorate in November:

(Wayne) Gilchrest is one of the few Republican House members who has voted against the war in Iraq several times, and his unwillingness to live in GOP fantasyland when it comes to this issue proved his undoing. By the time November comes around, it should be very, very clear to voters that there's one party that wants to continue the war regardless of circumstance, and another that wants to reassess our security priorities.

I will absolutely take our chances in that debate.