Only a year or so and already you're rewriting the history. First of all the Iraqi Sunnis turned on Al Qaeda before Petraeus was in command. He took advantage of this split and exploited it, but was certainly not responsible for it. To say he was is ridiculous.

Further, what has not been widely reported is the American decision to let the Sunni insurgents keep Al Qaeda weapons as an incentive to fighting Al Qaeda. Sunni tribes will agree to attack Al Qaeda if they can keep the weapons caches. This has caused a lot of animosity with the Shiite government as they see it as tacit arming of the potential opposition in a post occupation civil war.

And to say the surge has nothing to do with the reduction in violence flies in the face of every report coming out of Iraq, and the only reason you could possibly be saying it is to defend your boys Bush and Rumsfeld for not doing it years ago. Weak.