Yes. An intel official at the Pentagon tells me that they have drone video of Sattar’s folks going hand to hand with AQ after all the ammunition ran out in a days-long pitched battle.

http://usacac.army.mil/CAC/milreview/English/MarApr08/Smith_AnbarEngMarApr08.pdf

Seems to me that the Sunnis stopped fighting U.S. soldiers when Al Qaida started pissing them off more than the Americans were. The fighting between the tribes and AQI goes back to at least late 2005 when AQI wiped out a tribe who had started to fight against them. The difference between late 2005 and August 2006 seems to be that the American commander went to great lengths to help the Sunnis take back Ramadi from AQI.

Final comment: Everyone should know the names of Travis Patriquin and Sean Macfarland. They were responsible, in large parts, for turning the tide in Ramadi. Of course, credit should go to Sattar as well. The battle of Ramadi in 2006 is a largely untold story, I think.

The Sunni have stopped fighting because the US is paying the former Sunni insurgent groups to be a militia and restore order in Sunni areas.

The Sunni stopped fighting (the US and Iraqi government) because they were losing their society to al Qaeda and needed to take it back, and because they were weakened by the opposing forces of US/Iraqi government and the conflict with radical extremists. US pay to the wider Sunni labor pool has been a factor, no doubt, but it is a mistake to view that as the only or even main factor.

If you don’t believe me, ask yourself why the Iraqi Security forces were so unpopular and weak in Sunni areas for so many years, seeing as they were essentially extremely high paying jobs programs funded by the US.

The plan was for those Sunni militias to be absorbed into the Iraqi security forces, but so far the Iraqi government has refused to consider this. So the US is continuing to pay the Sunni while the Iraqi government drags its feet on real political reconciliation.

The GOI is dragging its feet, you are totally correct. But some forces have recently been integrated into the ISF, and the GOI is now paying some neighborhood watches in Baghdad. This problem needs to ameliorate, but it is also a function of mistrust. You say that the Iraqi government is worried about the US funding Sunni militias, and yet you want the Iraqi government to throw open the Iraqi Security forces to what are essentially Sunni militias. To some extent (not totally), Iraqi government mistrust is based on a rational fear of militia infiltration.

The Mahdi army has appeared to just stand down and disappear. No one is sure what that means. Sadr may have decided that the fastest route to power is through the political process and election, or maybe he is just waiting for US forces to leave Iraq.

The Mahdi Army was:

1. Recently routed by the IA and US, taking thousands of casualties in a few short weeks and losing control of Sadr City and Basra.

2. Has become pretty damn unpopular with the locals, having alientaed its constituency by shooting mortars into civilian areas, extorting people and placing IEDs in front of homes.

Combined with almost total Sadrist isolation in the political process/Iraqi coalition government, Sadr has been forced to regroup.

Both the Sunni and Sadr definitely want US forces out of Iraq.

This is almost 50% wrong. The main Sunni bloc in the current parliament want the US out. They are not representative of the Sunni. The Sunni led by the Awakening movement are more representative of "the Sunni," and they want the US to stay as a broker of the political process.

We are training and equipping the Sunni militias they may have to fight.

This is almost 100% wrong. We are not equipping the neighborhood watches and “training” is cursory, and includes things like ethics training as a focus. As for the Iraqi police in the Sunni areas? the Government of Iraq is now paying and equipping them.

In the end the future of Iraq is in Iraqi hands.

This is largely correct.

How is this any different from Afghanistan or any other place we confront terrorists?

If we win and send the terrorists fleeing – we lose.

If we lose and the terrorists stay where they are – we lose.

It seems we can’t win in your book.

al-Qaeda is an ideology. We have shown that ideology to be weak. It is the "weak horse" that no one wants to back, to use OBL’s analogy describing the United States.

al-Qaeda’s action in Iraq targeting other Muslims has proven it’s ideology is bankrupt amongst Muslims. It is less popular today in the Islamic world – not more.

Your beliefs are also pretty convenient. If there is no terrorism, we’re just waiting for the hammer to fall with "blowback" from the Iraq war. If we do suffer another attack, then it’s our fault for our actions in Iraq.

It’s all just defeatism. Jimmy Carter must be proud. So how do we win, Mike?

Destroying the value of the symbol is one way.  That seems to be working out fairly well.

mikeca is for real. I don’t agree with him often, but he makes a serious study of matters in the Middle East. He is far more informed than the typical partisan Democrat hack.

And Sandi, while there are Democrat hacks who keep moving the goal post, mikeca isn’t one of them. If you go back to Dean’s World archives from July 2007, he was predicting then what we’re seeing now. Unlike most Democrats of the time, he wasn’t predicting the Surge was doomed to failure; he was predicting that military success was already in the works due to the Iraqis, and that the Surge was irrelevant.
I disagree with the way mikeca presumes the worst; and I think his obsession with catching Bin Laden blinds him to the overwhelming damage that has been done to al Qaeda both in Iraq and world wide. But he’s honestly arguing the situation as he sees it, not just shaping his argument to fit his partisan goals.

Obviously, you did not read my comment.

The Sunni have stopped fighting because the US is paying the former Sunni insurgent groups to be a militia and restore order in Sunni areas. The plan was for those Sunni militias to be absorbed into the Iraqi security forces, but so far the Iraqi government has refused to consider this. So the US is continuing to pay the Sunni while the Iraqi government drags its feet on real political reconciliation.

The Mahdi army has appeared to just stand down and disappear. No one is sure what that means. Sadr may have decided that the fastest route to power is through the political process and election, or maybe he is just waiting for US forces to leave Iraq.

Both the Sunni and Sadr definitely want US forces out of Iraq. The Kurds are the only group that really wants US forces in Iraq. No matter who is elected, US forces are not going to be in most of Iraq much longer.

In the end the future of Iraq is in Iraqi hands. The current Iraqi government was happy to have us there fighting the Sunni resistance and al Qaeda, but now that the US is paying the former Sunni resistance and al Qaeda has largely been defeated, they don’t have much use for us. We are training and equipping the Sunni militias they may have to fight. They will either come to some political settlement with the Sunni or they will have their civil war after we leave.

All of this, of course, has nothing to do with the terrorists who have declared war on the US, destroyed the tallest building in the US and attacked the Pentagon. Because of this “nation building” project and the surge we don’t even have the troops to fight those terrorists. Invading Iraq was the biggest strategic error in US history. All the plans and tactical maneuvers in Iraq don’t change that.