This May saw fewer US military casualties in Iraq, 18, than any previous month in the war. It also saw the Iraqi government take significant steps to becoming a truly national government; successfully taking on the Shi’ite militias in Basra and Sadr City.
As The Washington Post writes in its lead editorial this morning:
To be sure, this progress is precarious and it is far too early to celebrate; just yesterday a suicide bomber killed nine people in Anbar province.“Iraq passed a turning point last fall when the U.S. counterinsurgency campaign launched in early 2007 produced a dramatic drop in violence and quelled the incipient sectarian war between Sunnis and Shiites. Now, another tipping point may be near, one that sees the Iraqi government and army restoring order in almost all of the country, dispersing both rival militias and the Iranian-trained “special groups” that have used them as cover to wage war against Americans.”
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