By E. Thomas McClanahan, Kansas City Star Editorial Board

Strategypage provides a brief update: The coalition is decimating al-Qaida's top leadership, and uncovering more weapons and ammo supply dumps. The posting notes: "All this is good news, meaning it's not reported." Sad but true.

Update: Regarding the ongoing offensive against the Sadrist Mahdi Army, even the New York Times has to some extent backed away from its initial reflexive pessimism, although today's story wheezes about the lack of basic services in Sadr City. Yet as Westhawk noted in a recent posting, the recent fighting in Basra could be viewed as a successful test of the U.S. withdrawal strategy: "The U.S. now has a clear path to achieve its goals in Iraq with a much smaller commitment of U.S. ground forces."
Caveats remain, but even though the
Basra operation appeared to begin badly for the Iraqi government, the Iraqi government, no doubt with substantial help from its U.S. and British advisers, quickly corrected its shortcomings. It fired disloyal soldiers, replaced ineffective commanders, and improved its coordination with the Americans and British. In other words, it took the steps any serious organization needs to take in order to improve its performance. The U.S. should be pleased it has an ally that it now exhibiting these organizational characteristics.
Read the whole thing.