Even The UN Acknowledges Iraqi Success

The media haven’t figured out yet how this is a victory for Moqtada Al-Sadr, but give them some time.

World leaders, including UN chief Ban Ki-moon and US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, on Thursday hailed Baghdad’s progress in combatting violence and stabilising Iraq.

A declaration adopted by 100 delegations at a Stockholm conference said the participants “recognised the important efforts made by the (Iraqi) government to improve security and public order and combat terrorism and sectarian violence across Iraq.”

Meanwhile, possibly due to Sadr’s presence, Iran has become The Country That Cannot Lose, at least in the eyes of Dem leadership.

And some of the success of the surge is that the goodwill of the Iranians-they decided in Basra when the fighting would end, they negotiated that cessation of hostilities-the Iranians.

Of course, back in the real world, that truce evaporated and the Iraqi Army took Basra, then Sadr City, and Iranian influence is dwindling as Iraqis notice they don’t seem to have Iraq’s best interests at heart, as Brigadier Gen. H.R. McMaster explains:

Well, I think what’s happening and this is one of the fundamental changes, is that the true intentions of Iran had been exposed and are more easily understood not just by us but also by the Iraqi people as really offensive in nature and really trying to keep Iraq deliberately weak so they have a weakened dependent government that has to look to them for support while at the same time they create organizations external to the government, political movements and especially militias, that can be turned against the government they ostensibly support, the Iranians ostensibly support, if the Iraqi government turns hostile to their interests.

Read that whole interview, it’s a great analysis of how things turned around from a guy who was instrumental in the process.