Time:

The Sinaa industrial district in southeast Fallujah was once al Qaeda's hive and bomb making base in the city. And for Marine Capt. Sean Miller, a suicide bomber's vest found there a few days ago symbolizes the dilemma at the heart of U.S. thinking about leaving Iraq.

Three years ago, the U.S. all but razed Sinaa in Operation Al Fajr. At least 900 shops and factories were destroyed or seriously damaged in a district that employed about 70% of Fallujah's workforce. To fully revive the city, the area has to return to its old industrious self. But to do that may allow Al Qaeda to slip back in. Marine officials say the bomb-laden vest they found Thursday looked new enough to indicate that that's just what Al Qaeda is trying to do.

"There are still reports... of people trying to build bombs in Sinaa right now," Capt. Miller told a group of civic, business and religious leaders who met clandestinely Friday at a Marine outpost amid the junk heap of Fallujah's former industrial hub. "We don't need any more gunfire; we don't need any more bullets; we don't need any more explosions," he said. "This area is very important to Fallujah. No more suicide bombers should be here.... Let's get people back to work and force the insurgents out."

RTWT.

Fox News [Emphasis mine]:

Maybe most significant was that last week there was not a single military casualty - Iraqi or U.S. - in Anbar, said Maj. Gen. Richard Sherlock, a Joint Chiefs spokesman. It is apparently the first time since March 2003 that could be said.

"I've never been more optimistic than I am right now with the progress we've made in Iraq. The only people who are going to win this counterinsurgency project are the people of Iraq. We've said that all along. And now they're coming forward in masses." -- Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch.

I'm maintaining my "cautious" qualifier. Show me a couple more months of data and we'll upgrade the celebration.

UPDATE: Also note this ground-up reconciliation event:

The Sheiks Conference Center's grand opening took place Oct. 18 near Taji, with sheiks of many tribes, Iraqi Police, Army, security volunteers, government representatives and troops of the 1st "Ironhorse" Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division, gathering with one common goal - reconciliation.

... by helping JD Johannes finish his latest documentary from Iraq.

And hit the tax-deductible PMI jar while you're at it, if inclined.

Reuters:

Violence in Iraq has dropped by 70 percent since the end of June, when U.S. forces completed their build-up of 30,000 extra troops to stabilize the war-torn country, the Interior Ministry said on Monday.
...
Washington began dispatching reinforcements to Iraq in February to try to buy Iraq's feuding political leaders time to reach a political accommodation to end violence between majority Shi'ites and minority Sunni Arabs that has killed tens of thousands and forced millions from their homes.

While the leaders have failed to agree on key laws aimed at reconciling the country's warring sects, the troop buildup has succeeded in quelling violence.

I'm inherently skeptical of numbers from Iraqi ministries, but that's usually because they overstate casualties rather than paint a rosy portrait. Read the rest. One item I'll add a layer to is the contention of little to no political progress. While the major federal issues remain unresolved, and this is a major concern, Iraq shows hopeful signs of ground-up reconciliation. Last week:

Influential Shiite cleric Ammar Hakim held talks in Ramadi on Sunday with a powerful Sunni tribal sheikh, which observers said were highly symbolic for reconciliation in war-torn Iraq.

The meeting between Hakim, a leading figure of the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council (SIIC), and Sheikh Ahmed Abu Reesha, leader of a Sunni coalition in western Anbar province formed to fight Al-Qaeda, was tightly guarded by Iraqi troops and police and the US military.

In addition, this little-heralded item might be the most important news to come of Iraqi in the last couple of months:

Because of security threats and a seemingly immovable bureaucracy, the federal ministries in Baghdad largely failed to spend billions of dollars of Iraqi oil revenues set aside last year to rebuild things like roads, schools, hospitals and power plants.

Although some ministries have improved slightly, what has really caught the eye of Iraqi politicians is the way some local governments have begun bypassing the morass in Baghdad by using hundreds of millions of dollars of the reconstruction money they receive from the government to finance regional projects.

The approach has found such favor among some political leaders that Iraq’s deputy prime minister, Barham Salih, arrived here with an all-star cast of senior government officials on Sunday to announce that Babil Province, whose capital is Hilla, would be rewarded with $70 million in new money and financing for a major loan program for small businesses and individuals.

A pivotal factor in cementing security progress is the distribution of resources to the provinces and localities. The willingness of the federal government to bypass corrupt and inefficient logistical chains to get money into local hands is a very good sign. In addition, the keys to onboarding the population in counterinsurgency operations are positive exposure to American and Iraqi personnel in the form of joint security ops plus aid, and a common enemy. While al Qaeda's barbarism in Anbar was the catalyst for the first Awakenings, fear of Iranian and militia influence may spur further unity, as Iraqis I've spoken to from Baghdad to Fallujah loathe the idea of being an Iranian puppet state ruled by fundamentalists. The turmoil caused by extremists in the south may be turning local sheiks towards open solicitation of Coalition and federal Iraqi help:

Shi'ite Islamist political parties are imposing strict Islamic rules in the oil-producing southern provinces of Iraq and using their armed wings to create a state of fear, a group of tribal Shi'ite leaders said.

The four tribal leaders approached Reuters on condition of anonymity, fearing assassination if their names or even their home provinces were made public.

"Fear rules the streets now," said one of the sheikhs. "We cannot speak our minds, people are not allowed to oppose them. They would immediately disappear or get killed. The evidence of that is I am talking about it but cannot use my name."
...
"We are suffering from two occupations -- America and Iran. We have told American officials this and we have met some of them, but they are not listening to us," one sheikh complained.

The situation echoes that of neighboring provinces, and may be ripe for engagement with the tribes. My instinct is that securing Baghdad, finishing Anbar and interdicting supplies and insurgents trying to cross the borders are priorities with diminished British manpower in southern Iraq, but a dissatisfied power structure may be ready to expel extremists in the south when Iraqi Army manpower and American support comes available. There is already Shia Tribal Awakening precedent south of Baghdad:

In Wasit province, Shia tribes are beginning to organize along the same lines as the Anbar Awakening and local Concerned Citizens groups south of Baghdad. "The leader of the Migasees tribe here in Wasit province, acknowledged tribal leaders have discussed creating a brigade of young men trained by the Americans to bolster local security as well as help patrol the border with Iran," the Associated Press reported. "The death of Sheik Abu Risha will not thwart us," said Sheik Majid Tahir al-Magsousi. "What matters to us is Iraq and its safety."

The Shia tribes began to organize after the murder of two provincial governors and last month's clash between the Mahdi Army and security forces in Karbala during a religious festival. Security forces, which are officially sanctioned by the Iraqi government, are being organized much like the Provincial Security Forces were in Anbar.

With Awakenings as far south as Wasit and Najaf, the three southernmost provinces might soon follow. It was interesting to observe the viral nature of the awakening in Anbar in January, as individuals in Fallujah heard and spoke of the news from Ramadi and consciously worked to duplicate the model.

The situation in Iraq is fluid; the last few years have taught us that security can take rapid negative turns, especially with persistent foreign influence. Gaining ground on security, political and reconstruction fronts remains similar to "playing high speed chess in the dark" or building a house in a storm that always threatens to become a hurricane, but momentum is unmistakably positive. I can't call assessments of impending victory anything but recklessly premature, but there's a better than even shot at stability in Iraq. If current progress buys enough domestic political capital to maintain America's reconstruction of infrastructure and administrative systems, in addition to brokerage between Iraqi political parties, this is indeed "a war we might just win."

"Cautiously optimistic" are the words of the day.

UPDATE: See this assessment from Yon:

Violence is plummeting. But much of Iraq is a complete mess, a horrible mess. Now is the time to put the foot on the gas. The battalion commanders are not "fishing" for the Iraqi leaders, nor are they "teaching the fisherman to fish." Iraqis can run their own country again. We only must facilitate the fishermen by helping them with the reconciliation, the infrastructure and economy. But it is imperative that we not stop now; it's clearly starting to work.

(Via B5 via RCT-6)

B.A. Patty begins a three-part series on anti-terrorist operations in the Phillipines at The Long War Journal :

The battles between the AFP and Abu Sayyaf and MNLF make the papers, but they miss the real story of the counterinsurgency in the Philippines. The real story is the movement of the populace away from support for conflict and toward a support for the peace processes. This has followed "a shift in strategy since April," according to Raphael, to focus on what are called civil military operations, which focus on dealing with problems afflicting the people. "A lot of the villages have insufficient water," the general said. "They have no schools. We are doing massive infrastructure projects." Acting in cooperation with the JSOTF-P, the AFP have held numerous meetings at which medical treatment is provided to anyone who showed up, with any problem that could be handle in the field. The AFP has built schools and community centers.

There is a stick-and-carrot approach at work here. Funds are limited for these projects, and so villages get them where the AFP can travel most safely. Leaders in Mindanao are told honestly enough that while the Filipino government would like to help everyone, it has limits on both funding and manpower. The villagers see their neighbors getting the benefits of a peaceful society, and they begin to want those benefits also. These villagers are not fools, and they are not weak. Abu Sayyaf and even MNLF travel and operate only with local support, and neither group is strong enough to dominate the people of Mindanao, whose ancestors are those same Moro warriors who fought US troops after secession.

Patty's embed was a joint PMI / BlackFive project. You can support such embeds here.

"Nevertheless, it's looking more and more as though those in and outside of Congress who last month were assailing Gen. Petraeus's credibility and insisting that there was no letup in Iraq's bloodshed were -- to put it simply -- wrong."

See also, Roggio: Violence in Iraq Drops Dramatically

UPDATE: And the hits keep coming: Al-Qaeda In Iraq Reported Crippled

Blogging is intermittent as I continue to catch up on the day job, though a piece or two remains on deck. In the meantime, belated gratitude to all those who linked me or provided other support during my embed. Citizen journalism is a network-based endeavor; without these folks, the trip would be pointless:

Hot Air, Kate McMillan, Glenn Reynolds, all at Blackfive, Jeff Goldstein, Dave Price & Dean Esmay, Michelle Malkin, Nicholas Packwood, Mr & Mrs. Greyhawk, Rusty Shackleford, DaF, Charles Adler, Sister Toldjah, Pajamas Media, Michael Totten, Juliette Ochieng, Jules Crittenden, Ed Morrissey, Donnah Cracker, Captain's Journal, Dan Rhiel, Mary Katharine Ham, Mark Noonan, KnightHawk, Patterico, Ace of Spades, Rob & Steve Llama, Bruce McQuain, and ... all of the folks I've missed in this incomplete round-up.

Sincere thanks to you all.

The courtyard of Fallujah Police Headquarters.

The second and final installment of my report on the Fallujah Police Department is up at Long War Journal.

Iraqi Policeman pose in front of the Andalus Precinct in western Fallujah. (View larger image)

The first installment of my report on the Fallujah Police Department and their Police Transition Team Advisors is published at the Long War Journal.