• Iraqi civilian casualties are down two-thirds from their peak in December 2006.

• Iraq's government and the U.S. military say al-Qaida has been vanquished in Baghdad, as thousands of Iraqi families return to the capital to rebuild their lives.

• The U.S. has announced it will remove 3,000 troops, with more to follow in coming months, as the wind-down of the surge begins.

But so it goes with anti-war news organizations that aggressively report setbacks in Iraq but give short, if any, shrift to the positive developments.

It's to the point where some news observers use the absence of news about Iraq as a bellwether of U.S. progress — the old "no news is good news" indicator.