BAGHDAD WALLS COMING DOWN

BAGHDAD—Market by market, square by square, the walls are beginning to come down. The miles of hulking blast walls, ugly but effective, were installed as a central feature of the surge of American troops to stop neighbors from killing one another.

“They protected against car bombs and drive-by attacks,” said Adnan, 39, a vegetable seller in the once violent neighborhood of Dora, who argues that the walls now block the markets and the commerce that Baghdad needs to thrive. “Now it is safe.”

The slow dismantling of the concrete walls is the most visible sign of a fundamental change here in the Iraqi capital. The American surge strategy, which increased the number of United States troops and contributed to stability here, is drawing to a close. And a transition is under way to the almost inevitable American drawdown in 2009.

There are now more than 148,000 United States troops in Iraq, down from the peak of around 170,000 a year ago, and President Bush has accepted the military’s recommendation to remove 8,000 more by February.

How long will this peace last? And when will Barack Obama and his crew of Islamic appeasers (which includes most of the current Western leadership) accept a few facts? Not long and only when the jihadists pull back the mask, but that's not news either.

Read the entire New York Times piece HERE, if you like your global politics served up like fairy dust on ritz crackers. Can anyone notice Iran is still watching, waiting, and priming their pumps? But that's okay. This war will get much larger before it gets smaller. That much we know, we who do not suck wind in the Great Halls of Political Correctness...