I can't believe the New York Times actually printed this piece on their op/ed pages but I am supremely happy that they did. The following are a few short excerpts from Michael O'Hanlon & Kenneth Pollack of The Brookings Institute:

Here is the most important thing Americans need to understand: We are finally getting somewhere in Iraq, at least in military terms. As two analysts who have harshly criticized the Bush administration’s miserable handling of Iraq, we were surprised by the gains we saw and the potential to produce not necessarily “victory” but a sustainable stability that both we and the Iraqis could live with.

...Today, morale is high. The soldiers and marines told us they feel that they now have a superb commander in Gen. David Petraeus; they are confident in his strategy, they see real results, and they feel now they have the numbers needed to make a real difference.

...How much longer should American troops keep fighting and dying to build a new Iraq while Iraqi leaders fail to do their part? And how much longer can we wear down our forces in this mission? These haunting questions underscore the reality that the surge cannot go on forever. But there is enough good happening on the battlefields of Iraq today that Congress should plan on sustaining the effort at least into 2008.

Will the people listen to this? Will the MSM pick it up and run with it? Probably not. But how essential and promising would it be to our progress and potential victory if they would?

It seems the Iraqi parliament did decide to go ahead and take their August break, which is incredibly frustrating and irresponsible. Despite that, we press on. Maybe the government should take a little lesson from their athletes who were victorious in the 2007 Asian Cup. From AP: "The Iraq team's win dripped with symbolism, not least in the makeup of its front-line strikers: one Kurd, one Shiite, one Sunni."