U.S deaths in Iraq are the lowest two-month level since early in 2004. Thirty-eight Americans were killed in October, and 37 in November. The last time fewer than 75 U.S. troops died in Iraq was in February-March 2004. (Figures from www.icasualties.org.)

In his vitriolic op-ed in the Post today, John Bolton lambasts the people who wrote the recent Iran NIE as "not intelligence professionals but refugees from the State Department." By this he means Tom Fingar, primarily, who led State's Bureau of Intelligence and Research -- which, by the way, distinguished itself for getting Iraq right in 2002.

Vice President Cheney, in an interview with the Politico, laid down the marker for Iraq. It remains to be seen how Democrats will challenge the White House line on Iraq now that Iraq appears to be more secure. It's clear that few, if any, leading Democrats will embrace the Center for American Progress view that a year is time enough to get all the troops out.

Michael O'Hanlon, writing in USA Today, outlines what many national security Democrats want, namely, a plan for what O'Hanlon calls "sustainable stability" in Iraq over the long term. O'Hanlon's Dec. 5 op-ed is a followup to his piece last summer suggesting that the surge was working. He's got the ear of Steny Hoyer and Rahm Emanuel in the House, according to the Post.

First, Cheney:

“I am fairly confident we’ll have [Iraq] in a good place, where we’ll be able to look back on it and say, 'That was the right decision. It was a sound decision going into Iraq,'” Cheney told us in a 40-minute White House interview.

Sounding a note of caution, the vice president said: "We've got a lot of work to do. We're sort of halfway through the surge, in a sense. We'll be going back to pre-surge levels over the course of the next year."

But Cheney said that by the middle of January 2009, it will be clear that “we have in fact achieved our objective in terms of having a self-governing Iraq that’s capable for the most part of defending themselves, a democracy in the heart of the Middle East, a nation that will be a positive force in influencing the world around it in the future.”

All of that by 2009? “Yes, sir,” he replied.

Here's O'Hanlon:

We now have a realistic chance, not of victory, but of what my fellow Brookings scholar Ken Pollack and I call sustainable stability. Violence rates have dropped by half to two-thirds in the course of 2007, the lowest level in years. Iraq is still very unstable, but it has a chance.

Despite this progress, many Democrats are inclined to provide Bush the roughly $12 billion a month he requests for Iraq and Afghanistan in 2008 only if the money is devoted narrowly to counterterrorism and bringing home U.S. troops. This is a mistake.

Going positive

On strategic grounds, it appears that we now have an opportunity to salvage something significant in Iraq. Given sectarian tensions and brittle Iraqi institutions, this almost surely requires us to execute a gradual drawdown of U.S. forces there rather than an abrupt departure. In political terms, it would be rescuing defeat from the jaws of victory to mandate an end to an operation, however unpopular, just when it is showing its first signs of progress.

Democrats should change course. Rather than demand an end to the operation no matter what, they should continue to keep up the pressure for positive results in Iraq. They can retain their anti-war stance, emphasizing that their default position is that U.S. troops should soon come home absent continued major progress. The surge was never designed as just a military operation; it was intended to create political space for Iraqis to forge reconciliation with each other across sectarian lines. Since that is for the most part not yet happening, it is perfectly reasonable for the Democrats to demand more as a condition for continued funding.

By the way, O'Hanlon is (1) a supporter of "soft partition" of Iraq, and (2) an adviser to Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign who "suspended" his participation because he was too supportive of the surge.

In Baghdad, Gen. Petraeus praised Muqtada al-Sadr for the ceasefire, and he said that U.S. officials are in contact with Sadr's movement. From the Post:

Among several factors leading to the reduced violence, Petraeus pointed to what he called the decision by "a majority . . . of the militia" associated with Sadr to honor a cease-fire.

In striking contrast to the U.S. military's previous wariness -- if not hostility -- toward the young firebrand cleric, Petraeus praised Sadr personally for "working to rid his movement of criminal elements" and making a "pledge of honor" to uphold the cease-fire announced in August. He said the United States is in indirect dialogue with "senior members" of Sadr's organization to maintain the cease-fire.

"The Sadr trend stands for service to the people," and the goal is for Sadr and his followers to become "constructive partners in the way ahead," Petraeus said in an interview with defense reporters traveling with Gates.

Earlier this year, U.S. military and defense officials said Sadr had been weakened and his organization fragmented since the cleric left for Iran before the start of the boost in U.S. troops, apparently out of fear of being targeted.

"I wouldn't say he has been marginalized," Petraeus said Thursday. "He very much maintains contacts with his leaders and continues to give direction. . . . And there is an effort ongoing to try to get a grip on some of the nefarious actors who are associated with his movement."

From DOD's site:

“We applaud al-Sadr’s action, even as all of us in Iraq, including those in his units, recognize that some elements connected with the militia continue to carry out criminal actions and thus must be dealt with by Iraqi and coalition forces,” Petraeus said.

In his recent IPS column, Jim Lobe reports that American Jews continue overwhelmingly to support the Democratic party by a margin of 58 to 15 percent, and that U.S. Jews oppose any American attack on Iran. Lobe, reporting on the latest survey by the American Jewish Committee, adds:

Two-thirds of US Jews now believe that Washington should not have gone to war in Iraq – up two percentage points from 14 months ago – and 76 percent believe that US efforts to bring stability and order to Iraq are going either "somewhat" or "very" badly.

As for the threat posed by Iran – which is expected to be a major foreign policy focus of the Republican presidential campaign, particularly if Giuliani wins the nomination – only 35 percent of US Jews said they would support "the United States taking military action against Iran to prevent it from developing nuclear weapons," while 57 percent said they would oppose such a move.

On a gloomier note, however, if you look at the data in the AJC poll, there is this. Those polled were asked: "Do you agree or disagree with the following statement? 'The goal of the Arabs is not the return of occupied territories but rather the destruction of Israel.'" Incredibly, eighty-two per cent agreed. You can find the data here.

Right on the heels of the visit by President Ahmadinejad to the meeting last weekend of the Gulf Cooperation Council -- ironically, an organization established at Saudi behest to build Arab Gulf solidarity against Iran in the 1980s -- King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia has invited Ahmadinejad to visit Mecca for the hajj.

It's clear, by this invite, that the Saudis are opening the door wide to a reconciliation with Iran. The question is: are they doing this to persuade America to follow suit, or this being done with American support behind the scenes?

The visit was announced by Iran's ambassador in Riyadh, Mohammad Hosseini:

"King Abdullah today invited President Ahmadinejad to take part in the pilgrimage to Mecca," Mohammad Hosseini told the student news agency ISNA.

Mr Hosseini said Mr Ahmadinejad would travel to Saudi Arabia at the start of next week, without giving further details.

Today's Wall Street Journal reports that Iraq's oil production hit "a post-invasion record" at 2.5 million barrels a day.

Harith al-Dhari, the leader of the Muslim Scholars Association, gave an interview to Al Jazeera (from exile in Amman), in which he attacked Iran for its "cancerous" influence in Iraq. But, interestingly, he didn't include Sadr's Mahdi Army in the list of Iranian-backed groups:

Iran's influence is cancerous. It meddles in every aspect of life in Iraq. Its influence on Iraq's ruling parties is not a secret. The Al-Daawa party of al-Maliki, the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq [headed by Abd al-Aziz al-Hakim], and Iraqi Kurdish parties are ruling parties and all of them were either funded by or established in Iran.

These parties are the pillars of a government formed under the occupation, so if the occupation goes all its allies will go with it.

Iran nowadays has the upper hand in determining who rules Iraq. Economically, Iranian goods have been flooding Iraqi markets. We have documented evidence that the Iranian Revolutionary Guards are working actively in Iraq through their Jaish al-Quds (The Army of Jerusalem) militia. Senior officers of the militia are based in the offices of pro-Iranian political parties.

I've never heard of the Army of Jerusalem, by the way.

Dhari says that the Iraqi resistance is holding off rather than engaging the Awakening movement of Sunni tribes who are cooperating with the United States:

I think the resistance has chosen to back off and not engage al-Sahwa militias to avoid internicine fighting. They are regrouping now and for sure will bounce back.

The renewal of the UN mandate for the U.S. occupation of Iraq was rammed through without the required ratification by the Iraqi parliament. Read my Huffington Post commentary here.