I remain unconvinced that more troops were the answer, then, or now. I always thought that the surge was misnamed. I think that there are two other factors that are as important, and perhaps much more important, than troop levels per se.

First was the change of tactics, in which rather than hunkering down in bases and training Iraqis to go out and fight the insurgency, Petraeus put the troops out in the field and worked with the locals.

First problem. We were NEVER hunkering down in bases and relying on Iraqis to go out and fight. HELLO!? You are the one who has been reading all the military blogs for years. You buy this nonsense? Our troops have been in the field and working with the locals since day one, there just wasn't enough of them.

But I think that the most important factor was simply that the Iraqis tired of the insurgency and Al Qaeda. I think that Petraeus was the right man at the right time, but I don't think that it takes anything away from him to question how well the strategy would have worked two, or three years ago. It probably would have been better than what we were doing at the time, but I think that the time had to be ripe for the awakenings in Anbar and Diyala, and now in Baghdad. It may be that the Iraqis simply had to go through this brutal period to understand the barbarity and viciousness of the fundamentalists that were attempting to colonize them, as they had Afghanistan under the Taliban, and the benefits of working with Americans and each other, rather than trying to fight each other for the spoils of the war.

There is certainly some valid points here. The Sunnis grew tired of Al Qaeda's extremism and targeting civilians. Also, in a delayed way the execution of Saddam made them realize things would never go back to the old days. But to discount the surge is ridiculous. The generals on the ground know better than the right wing bloggers trying cover Bush's ass.