Contrary to vast spin and propaganda by McCain, Bush, O'Reilly and others, "The Troop Surge" in Iraq of 2007/8 did not succeed. Life in Iraq improved over the past year for four widely known reasons:
Mass coalition troop pullout: Britain's new government proved it won't occupy Iraq - it pulled out all its troops and abandoned its bases. Those are the main areas where peace broke out.
Grownup Coming On Duty - Iraqis and the whole world anticipated a new, sane president Obama who would reverse Bush policy, vowing to leave Iraq.
Cease fire from the leading nationalist army: Moqtada Al Sadr announced that he would patiently wait out Bush's final year and discourage attacks on US forces rather than spill Iraqi blood.
Reversed US Policy on Sunnis - the US finally realized that its 'deBaathification' policy towards Saddam's constituents was in context somewhere between Jim Crow and license to genocide. Now instead, with the Awakening program, we keep peace by arming and paying Sunni "insurgent" families we once slaughtered in Fallujah.
But standard dumbed down media has widely attributed calm to the Bush-McCain "surge" in the number of US troops. Ever clever, Democrats are playing along. Wise move?
By the way - look carefully at Obama's O'Reilly interview video and you'll see Obama starts to explain some of these points, but O'Reilly cuts him off. Then Obama is too eager to criticize the Iraq government to get back on track. Start at time 3:40 into it and have something to bite on handy.
(Of course, O'Reilly had final cut.)
I think we should get it out there clearly - this is no time to triangulate away the Iraq judgement issue.
After all, in Iraq - a nation where now over 70% of the people admit they applaud attacks on US troops - adding more troops was just not what decreased the violence.