An interesting rash of reports about / from Iraq have surfaced in the past few weeks and, true to form, you won't hear very much about it on the front page of the New York Times.  But, if you believe them, they portend a very different picture of events on the ground and a tipping point of sorts that's been reached.

First, Belmont Club recently reported on the latest "Trip Report" from Gen Barry Mccaffery - one of the loudest anti-Rumsfield generals pre-Iraq War -

General Barry McCaffrey (USA ret) made a trip to Iraq last April 13-20 and set out his observations in a widely circulated PDF summarized in the press reports here and here...The New Republic called General McCaffrey Secretary Rumsfeld's "most outspoken critic" in 2004.

...The point of the US war effort is to create legitimate and competent Iraqi national, provincial, and municipal governance. We are at a turning point in the coming six months. The momentum is now clearly with the Iraqi Government and the Coalition Security Forces..an increasing political disaster for the insurgency.

If the fastest way for a general to land on the front page is to make an anti-Rumsfeld remark, I suppose the quickest way to get banished to the blackhole of anonymity is to follow it up with a statement about progress in Iraq.

Now, it's one thing for a retired US General - even an anti-Rumsfeld one - to report so positively on Iraq, after all, he's still American.  Which is why this note - a recently captred Al Qaeda memo is so darn interesting.  Captain's Quarters presents a detailed description of the document under the rather apt title "Every Year is Worse than the Previous Year"

I'd summarize it as -

• "we're losing, and losing more every year"
• "our only successful front is media-centric attacks - but this is even starting to distract us from achieving real (territorial) goals"
• "the iraqi public is against us"
• "even the Sunni's are turning against us -- esp. as more of them become members of the Iraq National Guard"
• "we're running out of weapons"
• "we're running out of effective leaders"

So basically, it appears that one of the most democratic countries in the Middle East is also the one where the population is most hostile to Al Qaeda.  Fancy that.