The Surge in Iraq IS Working.....

"ABC's Terry McCarthy Has Been Checking Out Conditions In Some Of The City's Neighborhoods And Has Found Definite Improvement." ABC's Charles Gibson

From ABC's "World News" With Charles Gibson

April 3, 2007

ABC's Charles Gibson: "Meanwhile, Iraq's government announced today that the security situation in Baghdad has improved in recent weeks, enough that the city's curfew can be relaxed. Until now, the curfew has been 8:00 PM till 5:00 AM. Now, residents will be allowed on the street until 10:00 PM. ABC's Terry McCarthy has been checking out conditions in some of the city's neighborhoods and has found definite improvement."

ABC's Terry McCarthy: "Children have come out to play again. Shoppers are back in markets. A few devout souls even venture past the barbed wire to pray. Baghdad is still rocked by car bombs every day. But right in the center of the city, a small area of relative calm is starting to grow, thanks to stepped up U.S. patrols and increased Iraqi checkpoints. Nowhere is safe for Westerners to linger, but over the past week we visited five different neighborhoods where the locals told us life is slowly coming back to normal.

We started in what used to be one of the most dangerous parts of the city. This is Haifa Street, otherwise known as Sniper Street.' Until two months ago, a major battleground between U.S. troops and insurgents. Today, people who live on Haifa Street tell us it is quiet or at least quiet enough for them to venture back out on to the street.

At a tea shop, these men actually asked us to film them to show things are getting better. In Babil, we stopped f or ice cream, 20 cents a scoop. The owner here, Mohamed Hassan, tells us security is improving in this part of Baghdad just in time for the summer, which is, of course, when they make most of their money.

Hussein Jihad has a clothing store in Karada. When people heard that it was safe,' says Hussein, they started coming out and spending money again.' We found a mosque in Zayouna that had been fire-bombed. Now, open for prayer. And in Zawra, Baghdad's biggest amusement park is running again.

People feel safe to bring their kids here, and have fun on a Friday afternoon. For us, it is really great to see people in Baghdad having fun. It's safe here,' says 12-year-old Abdullah. There used to be some bullets, but not anymore.' Nobody knows if this small safe zone will expand or get swallowed up again by violence. For the time being, though, people here are happy to enjoy a life that looks almost normal."

Instapundit Blog: General Petraeus On McCain's Trip To Iraq

ANOTHER UPDATE: HERE'S MORE ON MCCAIN IN BAGHDAD

Here's the perspective the press isn't providing: We are in the middle of a tough, bloody war in Iraq. Throughout 2006, the war was going very badly, especially in Baghdad. Large chunks of the city were subject to a bloody campaign of ethnic cleansing, murder, and terrorism. Sunni families fled. Markets closed. Normal life ground to a halt. Those perilous trends have been stopped in the past few months and are beginning to be reversed. This is due to an increased deployment of Iraqi and American troops, and especially to the fact that Americans are no longer staying on their giant forward operating bases. They are patrolling more intensively from joint security stations and small combat outposts located in the middle of the city.
Though only three of the five extra brigades scheduled to be deployed have yet arrived in Baghdad, the offensive has already paid big dividends. A semblance of normality is returning in some neighborhoods, markets are reopening, sectarian murders and ethnic cleansing have been dramatically reduced. The situation still isn't great, but at least the downward trend has been stopped. There have been a few big suicide bombings lately that obscure this improvement, but most of these have been outside Baghdad, where the current security operation is focused. Needless to say, coalition forces can't magically pacify the entire country overnight and that can't be the measure of success or failure.

The fact that McCain was able and willing to walk around the Shorja market indicates that things are getting better, even if Iraq remains a war zone. Of course McCain had heavy security; he's an especially attractive target for insurgents. But the market was functioning normally while he was there, and he wasn't surrounded by bodyguards. He walked around freely without a helmet (though he was wearing body armor), and mingled with Iraqis. So did the other members of his delegation, as well as General David Petraeus, the senior U.S. commander in Iraq.

Reporters may think this was like a Sunday stroll in Central Park, but that wasn't the view of the U.S. embassy's security coordinator, who refused to sign off on McCain's visit because he thought it was too risky. The Senator thought otherwise, and he made an important point with his visit.