Progress In Iraq

While the official replacement for Chrenkoff's "Good News From Iraq" series can be found here, there were a couple of stories that caught my attention this weekend.

The first is a post at Pubilus Pundit, detailing the waning opposition to the Iraqi constitution. (The piece has also been noted by instapundit and blogsforbush.) Notable outtakes include:

While we can’t perfectly predict what will happen, major leaders on the playing field are saying that they will not mount strong campaigns against the constitution, and will focus instead on the December elections.

and

Since it will be likely approved, the shaping up of the December elections is even more interesting now than the October referendum. If you take into account what I just wrote, people are beginning to opt for good governance over religious ideology in government. This attitude, combined with high Sunni turnout, will lead to a huge drop in the representation of religious parties.

Additionally, the author takes the media to task for once again being unprofessional in a desire to paint a negative picture of what is happening in Iraq.

Even as violence escalates in the country as the October referendum nears, the media is reporting that and only that. They were content to chastise the supposed failure of negotiating a liberal constitution even before the negotiations were over, and have since failed to do a follow-up showing just how promising the developing political situation amongst the various sectors of civil society is.

The other story that I noted was on the recent success of a military exercise to hit Al Qaeda in Iraq operating near the Syrian border. U.S. forces have killed 36 terrorists while suffering no serious casualties. Marine Col Davis notes:

"There's only so many of them out there," Davis said of the insurgents. "The enemy has a problem out here — every time he shows up he gets bombs dropped on his head ... What you're seeing now is the dissolution of their network."

It will certainly be a rocky ride between now and the vote on the Iraq constitution (and beyond to the December elections). But the news out of Iraq is not all bad and I think it is important that people realize that. I'm sure that the NYT will be reporting this good news just as soon as they finish their 54th editorial attacking President Bush.