And now the end is near

It's now time to look forward to troop reductions(notice I didn't say withdrawls) in Iraq. Al Qaeda in Iraq has been largely defeated with only the luckiest few still alive, though their abilities are really too weak to cause serious problems, except for the innocent people who happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Al Qaeda in Iraq no longer threatens U.S. soldiers because they can no longer accept the kind of losses they take when facing Americans.

The other threat, the Mahdi army, is now trapped in Sadr City, facing either defeat or surrender. Surrender creates an unknown future for Mahdi Army leader, Moqtada al-Sadr. However surrender may be his best option as defeat creates a certain future.

Best of all is that the Mahdi Army has been defeated in Basra by Iraqi forces. The Iraqis planned and executed Operation Knights Charge on their own. The only negative result from battle for Basra was that over 1,000 Iraqi soldiers and policemen(most of whom just completed training) ran during the fight, still they reinforced the area and won the fight. The Iraqis have learned several lessons from this experience and now possess confidence that didn't exist even in Saddams military.

The success of Operation Knights Charge puts the Iraqi Army in the small company of Middle Eastern militarys that have actually accomplished something. Best of all is that Knights Charge was also a political victory. The Iraqi government finally showed some backbone and dealt with the biggest thorn in their side.

Now for the troop reductions. First of all, it's a fliud situation with many dynamics that can only really be underatood by the people in charge, lucky for us General Petraeus is the best man, sorry person, for the job.
Secondly it's hard to do anything until Sadr makes a decision regarding the future of his Mahdi army. Either way the drawdown could potentially be quite large, but it might still take some time, initial numbers maybe small with larger numbers coming at a benchmark(so the politicians can have some glory too). The other possibility is a consistent number of troops being reduced periodically until they are to the established minimum.

Either way, i'll be looking forward to everybody returning home.