Headlines below the fold

41 prisoners liberated from Al quaeda torture chamber in Iraq: Americans got a tip from locals who are now helping in the fight. NYTimes yawns.. Jules Crittenden calls it the "body count" mentality...nope, no bias here, folks, just move along.

Michael Yon's site has a summary about Anbar provence.

Although there is sharp fighting in Diyala Province, and Baghdad remains a battleground, and the enemy is trying to undermine security in areas they’d lost interest in, the fact is that the security plan, or so-called “surge,” is showing clear signs of progress. The city of Hit, for instance. Only about a hundred days ago, Hit was a city at war. Today, the buildings are still riddled with bullet holes, but the Iraqi people are opening shops and painting over the scars. They are waving and smiling while hundreds of men are volunteering to join the police. I saw a “policeman” on duty today whose “weapon” was a plastic pistol. I photographed the toy. And so this man was on “duty” with a toy pistol, though he has not yet attended the police academy and is not even being paid. A writer could probably squeeze bad news from that story, but I won’t try. In fact, Hit is a place where writers who wish to escape combat and bad news should visit.

Again, another day passes, and I have no bad news to deliver other than what amounted to a trivial attack with a very small bomb.