I recently spent a week touring Iraq, meeting with American servicemen and women and interacting with Iraqis. What I saw convinced me that the war has changed in both tone and substance since the president surged 30,000 troops into the country earlier this year.
A year ago, sectarian brutality and violence were out of control. Every month approximately 1,000 American servicemen and women were either killed or wounded as they fought to staunch a bloody civil war that to date has killed 60,000 Iraqi civilians.