Some of the worst news to come out of Iraq is the high number of lost limbs. Experts attribute this number to less deaths, due to advances in medicine, but giving an arm or a leg for your country is still an amazing sacrifice. One man gave that sacrifice, and is now back in Iraq. Stop the ACLU shares with us this amazing video report:

My local newspaper ran an opinion piece about the Iraq War, sort of. The Vindicator released an article giving various opinions from local vets, organizers, and regular folks, about the War in Iraq. The article is a good read, and offered a rare balanced view of the public opinion, with more substantive thoughts than any poll could give us. I applaud them for the great piece. Excerpt:

Nonetheless, Brooks said he saw progress in winning over the Iraqi people while he was there. Comparing when he arrived with when he left, he said the Iraqi people had a lot of freedoms they didn’t have before — not just voting rights, but human rights. These were simple things, he said, like satellite dishes and outside entertainment. And, he said, there was no more torture going on, unless it was by insurgents.

“We were 100 percent right to invade Iraq. The American people knew what we were doing and where we were going, and now don’t like it because of all the politics going on,” he said. “We are going to be there a while longer because those people have built up so much anger against us. But, they are using so much time and energy defending themselves that it keeps them from attacking here. We have not had any more terrorist attacks in U.S. since [Sept. 11],” he noted.

U.S. casualties are down from a year ago, Iraqi casualties are down from a year ago, and it's all because of the surge. Bottom-up political reconciliation is happening all over Iraq, and the good news is being reported because it's THE news out of Iraq. Here's some of the good stuff:

BAGHDAD - At least 29 U.S. troops died while serving in Iraq in February, the third-lowest monthly casualty toll for the U.S. military since the American-led invasion in 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

Troop fatalities declined from 40 in January, and also dropped steeply from February 2007, when at least 81 troops died in Iraq.

But Iraqi casualties increased compared with January, although violence was reduced substantially from a year ago.

The AP count revealed at least 739 Iraqi security forces and civilians were either killed or found dead last month, up from 610 in January, which had the lowest monthly death toll since the end of 2005.

In February 2007, at least 1,801 Iraqis were killed.

As things continue to get better in Iraq, we'll find ourselves surrounded by new allies who are grateful for the new security situation. That will help build up confidence in the Iraqi government and security forces, and soon enough, they'll be able to secure the country themselves. This is the Petraeus plan, and it is working.

Just as Boehner said, we're winning. New documents seized from al-Qaeda in Iraq are proving just that, and are proving that al-Qaeda is in a weakened position from just years ago. Charles at LGF shares with us the contents of one of the documents:

In the Anbar document, the author describes an Al Qaeda in crisis, with citizens growing weary of militants’ presence and foreign fighters too eager to participate in suicide missions rather than continuing to fight, said Rear Adm. Gregory Smith, a U.S. military spokesman.

“We lost cities and afterward, villages... We find ourselves in a wasteland desert,” Smith quoted the document as saying.

The memo — believed to have been written in summer 2007 — cites militants’ increasing difficulty in moving around and transporting weapons and suicide belts because of better equipped Iraqi police and more watchful citizens, Smith said.

Charles goes on to mention that one of the candidates for President called the Iraq War a "Complete Failure" back in August. We will win this war, but only if we continue electing leaders that understand the stakes of our conflict, and only if we support our fighting men and women.

Nancy Pelosi, in an interview with Wolf Blitzer, called our ongoing military action in Iraq a failure, despite major gains under General Petraeus. Bryan from Hot Air has the exchange documented, along with the response from House Minority Leader John Boehner. Take a look at:

Congressman Boehner was pushing hard on the Hill to give General Petraeus time to make his changes in strategy, and time on the ground to fix Iraq. Now that he has that time, there have been plenty of improvements in the state of security. Reconciliation is not coming from the top down as we expected, but rather from the bottom-up, as I discussed recently. Bryan sums it up best:

But now that even Pelosi has to recognize that the surge has worked militarily, the Democrats are shifting to accelerating pulling out because the Iraqi government hasn’t met each and every benchmark of success yet. Pelosi and her ilk are dangerously irresponsible and in denial of the fact that they have been dead wrong about the surge for a year and that their unnamed retired generals are wrong now. These people have never wanted to give either the surge or the Iraqi government one of the most important things that both needed to be able to reach success: Time.