The Retreat Of The Defeatists?

Those denying any significant progress in Iraq will have a more difficult row to hoe now that Katie Couric, darling of the MSM, has acknowledged significant improvements in Iraq:

One week before Gen. David Petraeus is expected to give his report on U.S. progress in Iraq, CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric says she has already seen dramatic improvements in the country.

"We hear so much about things going bad, but real progress has been made there in terms of security and stability," Couric said Tuesday. "I mean, obviously, infrastructure problems abound, but Sunnis and U.S. forces are working together. They banded together because they had a common enemy: al Qaeda."

"The spike in police has really been significant," Couric said. "The incidents in Iraq have gone down dramatically."

Indeed they have, as evidenced by the metrics provided over at the Victory Caucus.  As I've stated before, the Dems and their allies will continue arguing that military progress is all well and good, but progress on the political front is what really matters.  Sure, this is a blatant shifting of the goal posts, but it's really just one of the two arguments those desiring a troop withdrawal have left.  The third and final argument will be unveiled and taken for a spin if some of the promising political developments manifest themselves fully.  That argument will be that, since things seem to be getting much better, we can pull the troops out and let the Iraqis take it from here.  The problem with this thinking is that it fails to acknowledge that our presence will be necessary until we are absolutely certain and without any doubt that the Iraqis can sustain the stability.  It would be foolish to turn what would be an apparent victory into a gut-wrenching defeat.

General Petraeus is reportedly going to recommend a troop reduction beginning in March, mostly because the surge was never designed to be permanent and its continuation would place a strain on our military forces. 

A military official told ABC News that a small drawdown could begin as soon as December, with further reductions every 45 days until the troop numbers are once again down to 130,000 or more from the current 164,000 troops.

This level of troop reduction is not exactly what the Dems and their anti-war base had in mind.