Controversy of the week | The Week

All of a sudden, President Bush and the Republicans have the upper hand on Iraq, said Kimberley Strassel in The Wall Street Journal. Until this spring, the news from the war zone was

consistently bad. Faced with an increasingly disheartened electorate, “dozens of Republicans were threatening to call it quits” and join Democrats in insisting on a firm pullout date. Then

President Bush made “an impassioned plea.” Wait until September, he urged, so we can give the brilliant new commander, Gen. David Petraeus, a chance to turn things around with the “surge” of

30,000 additional troops. “And slowly, slowly began a trickle of good news: fewer car and suicide bombings here, fewer violent civilian deaths there.” When Petraeus testified to these and

other positive developments before Congress last week, the defeatist Democrats who said Iraq was already lost were proved wrong. “The war is in a better place” now, and so are the loyal

Republicans who are joining Bush in insisting on success, even if it takes many years.

But the war is not, in fact, in a better place, said Fred Kaplan in Slate.com. Questionable statistics showing a reduction in the carnage don’t change the fact that Iraq’s Shiite leaders

have no interest in reconciling with the Sunnis. Anyone with open eyes can see that Iraq is well along in the process of “fissuring into at least three separate countries.” Yet following

Petraeus’ testimony, in a speech “rife with evasion and fantasy,” Bush tried to portray Iraq as a unified ally under assault by foreign terrorists. In reality, Iraq is being destroyed from

within by its own “sectarian clashes,” with al Qaida in Iraq responsible for only 5 percent of the daily, gruesome attacks.

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