Again, it’s a mixed story, but Iraq is still appearing to have improved since the use of a new strategies. The following is from a Guardian reporter who has been embedded with US forces.

From the little I have seen of the capital, I am inclined to agree that a hasty US retreat, while seductively simple, is not the way to suck out the poison. I saw Iraqis pleading with US soldiers to spend more, not less time patrolling their neighbourhood because they believed worse options - extremist factions, gangsters and criminals - were waiting to fill the vacuum. To be sustained, any downturn in violence needs the country’s sectarian leaders to find common political ground.

Under General David Petraeus, US military forces in Iraq have learned lessons the hard way - but at least they have learned them. They get out of their vehicles and talk to the people about everyday concerns over security, power and schools. They play football with grateful children. They offer amnesties to former insurgents and bring them to the negotiating table. When attacked, they do not lash out blindly but depend on brave citizens, whose trust they are winning, to help identify the criminals. “We cannot kill our way out of this,” I heard one colonel say.
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But the Americans - apparently believing that having started this war, they have a moral responsibility to finish it - are now getting most of it right most of the time. A journalist who spent Thanksgiving Day touring Iraq with Petraeus told me that one of his strengths is that, unlike the caricature of a US army commander, he is not afraid of ambiguity or paradox. He will find Iraq has plenty more of both to offer in the long years ahead.