One of the lessons of the Pentagon Papers from the Vietnam era was the danger inherit when the Pentagon provided inaccurate or biased reports assessments to the White House, Congress, and the American people. In a strange reversal, we must now ask ourselves: have the leading news organizations done a disservice to the Democratic Party by inadequately reporting the positive changes that have taken place over the last two years in Iraq? Early this month, as if following the script of the insurgents in Anbar, Muqtada al Sadr instructed members of his Shiite Militia, the Mahdi Army, to lay down their arms. These extraordinary changes have caught Democratic leaders off-guard and scrambling to spin their recent calls for "immediate withdrawal" in, as they saw it, "the face of looming defeat."

Colonel MacFarland was made a brigadier general this spring, recommended by a promotion board that included General Petraeus. His 2006 news briefing on the nascent change in Ramadi was never televised. It has, however, made its "world premiere" recently on Youtube and should be instructive to Senator Obama and his staff regarding the time-line for the change in Iraq that has been so much discussed over the last few weeks.

If, as President, the Senator pursues his much vaunted policy of "talking with an adversary" he might recognize the wisdom of Patriquin and MacFarland's practice of, before embarking, determining whether there is genuine common ground on which to base those discussions. He might also heed the warning of the British experience in Basra, who last summer made an accommodation with al Sadr's Mahdi Army that obliged them to sit on the side-lines this spring while the Iraqi Army fought to take back that city. If as President Senator Obama begins a partial withdrawal of troops from Iraq, he should acknowledge that US forces are able to leave a stable Iraq because of their success in changing strategy and tactics, a change that began in Ramadi, Anbar Province.