TEH SURGE? NOT SO MUCH!

Some wingnuts, like War Whore Laura Ingraham, argue that the Surge was a tremendous success but the DoD contradicts her claim. Although Al-Qaeda in Iraq has been weakened, it is still a major threat. And let's recall that the Anbar Awakening is the MAIN reason AQI isn't as much of a threat.

Commander: Al-Qaida in Iraq is at its weakest
By ROBERT BURNS – 4 hours ago

MACDILL AIR FORCE BASE, Fla. (AP) — The al-Qaida terror group in Iraq appears to be at its weakest state since it gained an initial foothold in the aftermath of the U.S.-led invasion five years ago, the acting commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East said Wednesday in an Associated Press interview.

Army Lt. Gen. Martin Dempsey, who assumed interim command of U.S. Central Command on March 28, acknowledged that al-Qaida remains a relentless foe and has not disappeared as a serious threat to stability. ... "They can regenerate, and do from time to time," he added in the interview in his office at Central Command headquarters.

Earlier Wednesday, the Army general who oversees U.S. commando operations in the Middle East said that al-Qaida in Iraq has yet to be vanquished but is increasingly running out of places where local Iraqis will accommodate the group's extremist ideology.

"Is he still a lethal and dangerous threat to us? Absolutely," Maj. Gen. John Mulholland said in an interview with reporters at the headquarters of U.S. Special Operations Command, the organization with global responsibility for providing Army Green Berets, Navy SEALs and other commandos to combat terrorism.

"I don't want to paint a picture — or to convey to you in any way — that al-Qaida in Iraq is being completely destroyed or rendered irrelevant, because that's not the case," he said. "They are still potentially a threat capable of death and destruction against the Iraqi people and our own forces there. But it is not something he can do easily any more."