Good News from Iraq: 26 Apr 2007

GEN David Petraeus on his briefing before the Senate (from Defense Link; hat tip Bill Roggio):

GEN PETRAEUS: I -- what I tried to do is to give an accurate depiction of the situation in Iraq -- a forthright assessment. It's an assessment that therefore includes areas in which there's been progress. As I mentioned, for example, the reduction of sectarian murders in Baghdad -- a very important development. And again, remember we're in very early days on this. We're only about two months into the surge. We won't have all the forces on the ground until mid-June and I pointed that out to them, and noted that Ambassador Crocker and I would be doing an assessment in early September and provide that to our respective bosses at that time. That's something we agreed when Secretary Gates was out there.

I also pointed out the progress in Anbar Province, which has been very substantial, as you know. Literally over the last two months, Anbar has gone -- or certainly over the last six months -- from being assessed as being lost, to a situation that now is quite heartening because of the decision by a number of Sunni Arab tribes to join the fight against al Qaeda, saying no more -- they've had it -- and linking arms with the coalition to take on al Qaeda and one city after another really cleaning them out all the way down the Euphrates River Valley from al Qaim and Husaybah through Haditha, Hit, Ramadi and so forth, although as I pointed out to each of the respective bodies -- the House and the Senate -- there still is considerable work to be done in Anbar Province although all the trends are in the right direction. And in fact the two additional Marine battalions that are part of the surge are now operating just for the first couple of weeks in Anbar Province, and they'll be joined by some additional forces later on as with the two additional Army brigades as they move in to their respective areas in and around Baghdad.

. . .

[W]e are actually ahead of where I wanted to be in some areas and probably behind where we might have hoped to be in some other areas. We are ahead, I think, with respect, as I mentioned, to the reduction of sectarian murders in Baghdad. Progress in Anbar is almost something that's breathtaking. We have made huge inroads. I think that you just saw an announcement -- the killing of the security emir of al Qaeda Iraq in eastern Anbar province, the detention of the Qazali network. This is the secret cells of the Shi'a extremist network. I'm not sure whether we've announced it, but we picked up the Shavani (ph) network head in Iraq. That's the explosively formed projectile element inside Iraq that gets from the other in Iran the explosively formed projectiles. We have learned a great deal more about Iranian involvement, very nefarious involvement involving funding, training on Iranian soil, advice and the provision of, again, lots of arms and ammunition, including these explosively formed projectiles that have been so lethal against some of our armored vehicles.

. . .