AP Military Reporter Robert Burns has issued a fine propoganda piece called Pentagon Gives Gloomy Iraq Report. I'm sure I don't have to mention

Now I wouldn't criticize the article for ignoring any good things that might be happening in Iraq - after all the news report is focused solely on the Pentagon report and if it says things suck, then the article should say so. Except there are some things right up front that are quite positive.

Average peak electrical generating output increased 15.8% this quarter to 4,573 megawatts (MW) and continued to increase over the quarter. Iraq averaged 14 hours of power
per day this quarter, an improvement of 3 hours per day over the previous quarter.

Crude oil production for the second quarter improved 18% to 2.2 million barrels per day (mbpd), and exports improved by 20%, to 1.6 mbpd. Also during this quarter, Iraq resumed exports from northern fields for the first time since the autumn of 2005.

Iraq achieved a historic milestone on July 13, 2006, with the transfer of security responsibility in Muthanna Province from MNF-I to the Provincial Governor and the civilian-controlled Iraqi Police Service (IPS). Moreover, since the May report, MNF-I has transferred an additional 10 Forward Operating Bases (FOBs) to the Government of Iraq. Forty-eight of 110 FOBs are now under Iraqi control.

New projects have “added capacity to provide an estimated 4.2 million people with access to potable water—an increase of 1.2 million people since the May 2006 report—but direct
measurement of water actually delivered to Iraqis is not available.”1 Additional projects currently under way should increase infrastructure capacity to provide access to clean water to as many as 5 million more people.

My point is not to negate the problems and the violence that one can also easily find in the Pentagon report, but to not even mention anything positive in their findings relegates the journalist's work to anti-war propoganda.

Now I will mention the seemingly good news that has nothing to do with the contents of the report.

BAGHDAD (AP) — Preliminary figures show that violent deaths in Iraq dropped substantially in August from record levels the previous month, a Health Ministry official said Thursday.

At least 973 violent deaths were recorded throughout Iraq as of Wednesday, Riad Abdul Amir of the ministry's statistics bureau told the Associated Press...the new figure represents a significant drop from a tally of 3,500 deaths in July reported by Deputy Health Minister Adel Muhsin. Muhsin said that was the highest monthly figure recorded since the war began in March 2003.

Violent deaths in the capital fell to 550 in August, from about 1,500 in Baghdad in July. That was the city's lowest monthly tally this year.

Of course in the AP report mentioned above, the reporter writes, "The bloodshed capped a week in which hundreds of Iraqis were killed despite a security crackdown that targeted some of Baghdad's most violent neighborhoods." That would lead you to believe that things are the same if not worse wouldn't it?

Also from the same article...Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said Iraqi forces will take responsibility for Thi-Qar province in the south this month. Thi-Qar would be the second of Iraq's 18 provinces that local forces would control.

It seems to me that much of this success is attributable to our increase and repositioning of troops in Baghdad (as opposed to Okinawa, Japan where John Murtha thinks they should be sent to improve the situation).