QUESTION: Are we losing in Iraq?

The Times has reported:

Fed up with being part of a group that cuts off a person’s face with piano wire to teach others a lesson, dozens of low-level members of al-Qaeda in Iraq are daring to become informants for the US military in a hostile Baghdad neighbourhood. The ground-breaking move in Doura is part of a wider trend that has started in other al-Qaeda hotspots across the country and in which Sunni insurgent groups and tribal sheikhs have stood together with the coalition against the extremist movement.

‘They are turning. We are talking to people who we believe have worked for al-Qaeda in Iraq and want to reconcile and have peace,’ said Colonel Ricky Gibbs, commander of the 4th Brigade, 1st Infantry Division, which oversees the area. The sewage-filled streets of Doura, a Sunni Arab enclave in south Baghdad, provide an ugly setting for what US commanders say is al-Qaeda’s last stronghold in the city. The secretive group, however, appears to be losing its grip as a ‘surge’ of US troops in the neighbourhood – part of the latest effort by President Bush to end the chaos in Iraq – has resulted in scores of fighters being killed, captured or forced to flee.

‘Al-Qaeda’s days are numbered and right now he is scrambling,’ said Lieutenant-Colonel Stephen Michael, who commands a battalion of 700 troops in Doura. A key factor is that local people and members of al-Qaeda itself have become sickened by the violence and are starting to rebel, Lieutenant-Colonel Michael said. ‘The people have got to deny them sanctuary and that is exactly what is happening.’

But as the Sunday Times reported earlier this month:

Even if the war is still winnable in Iraq, it is now being lost at home. Roughly half of Republican senators whisper privately that they have given up on Iraq, while a growing number are in open revolt. Bush’s own officials are expressing doubts about sustaining a war that will cost $135 billion this year. A record 71% of Americans want most troops out of Iraq by the spring. Bush’s approval rating has plunged below 30%. Britain, America’s staunchest ally, is inching away from the president under the new semi-detached leadership of Gordon Brown. In an interview yesterday, Lord Malloch-Brown, a minister at the Foreign Office, said that the British prime minister and US president would ‘no longer be joined at the hip’.

ANSWER: No — but we are losing in Washington and London where we are snatching defeat from the jaws of steady progress. Our military lions are being led by political donkeys.