Violence Still Down in Iraq

Is there anyway to heave a sigh of relief while still holding your breath?

I was just getting all cranky about the lack of news from Iraq, when, voila! (Or, as my high school yearbook might say in such a case, viola!), Ned Parker at the L.A. Times delivers the goods.

Civilian deaths are down--way down...down to January '06 levels...--for two months running.

You'd think this would be blaring from every news outlet in the country.

The bad news is that some of the decrease in violence seems to be attributable to the fact that the sectarian version of "ethnic cleansing" (a term that makes me feel dirty even when I put it in scare quotes) is largely completed, with neighborhoods now being more religiously homogeneous. I'm more than a little disgusted that I'm too (tentatively) relieved to be as disgusted by that as I should be by that.

Anyway, the rest seems to be attributable to the surge. (So I tentatively think that I was wrong when I said that I was wrong to support the surge.)

The other bad news is that there's still no real progress on the political front.

BUT! This does seem to be--comparatively speaking--pretty dang good news.