Iraq: "We are freaking winning out here"

There's been a whole bunch of positive (not "relatively positive", for-real positive) news and opinion coming out of Iraq in the past few weeks, and I think it is more than worth noting.

According to Marine Regimental Combat Team 6 in Camp Fallujah, Iraq, the new anti-insurgency tactics employed by Coalition forces are working, and not just a little. For example:

...The change over the past year has been amazing. Hell, even the change
since we got here in January has been noticeable. The sheiks and the tribes they
lead have thrown in their lot with us despite a constant murder and intimidation
campaign by Al Qaeda. Our approach to counterinsurgency is working and is an
illustration that given enough time, ordinary men and women -- the Iraqis we
work with every day -- will say "Enough violence is enough." They're tired of
their children dying, and of fearing for their lives just because they had the
nerve to try to keep their neighborhoods safe...

...The bottom line is that we are freaking winning out here. And the really
astonishing thing is that Coalition Forces aren't the main effort -- we're
simply an enabling factor. The Iraqi people, the moms and dads of Iraq, are the
ones who are winning this war.

How about Omar in Iraq:

...Iraqis are awakening, one very telling example can be seen in the
ongoing operation in Diyala; members of the 1920 revolution brigades, once
bitter enemies of the US military and Iraqi government are
now assisting US and Iraqi military in fighting al-Qaeda even though the
majority of the Iraqi soldiers and officers are Shia. If the change in
exclusively Sunni Anbar is good then the change in Diyala is good beyond
words...

Charles Krauthammer adds this:

...Accordingly, Petraeus and Crocker have found a Plan B: pacify the
country region by region, principally by getting Sunnis to join the fight
against al-Qaeda.

This has begun to happen in Anbar and Diyala. First, because al-Qaeda are foreigners. So are we, but --
reason No. 2 -- unlike them, we are not barbarous. We don't amputate fingers for
smoking, decapitate with pleasure and kill Shiites for sport.

Third, al-Qaeda's objectives are not the Sunnis'. Al-Qaeda adherents
live for endless war and a reborn caliphate. Ultimately, they live to die. Iraqi
Sunnis are not looking for a heavenly date with 72 virgins. They are looking for
a deal, and perhaps just survival after U.S. troops are gone...

By now, you should know I am, at heart, an optimist. I welcome good news. While I still think the Iraq debacle has been, well, a debacle, we are where we are. All we can hope for is a somewhat positive outcome. For a change, that actually seems to be a possiblity.