Patriquin earlier won the Bronze Star with Valor for his participation in a fierce battle in Afghanistan. In Ramallah, Iraq, where a building has been named after him, he was honored by the locals as "Martyr Husham" - the brave and generous martyr. In September 2007, Sheikh Sittar, Captain Patriquin's interlocutor, was martyred as well. Two of Sheikh Sittar's brothers, and other members of the family, had earlier been killed. A fourth brother soon assumed his position in the Sahawat al-Anbar.

In the run-up to the 2006 congressional elections, news of the truly remarkable events in Anbar was largely ignored. In the Washington Post, Thomas Ricks, author of "Fiasco," distorted a classified report by Captain Peter Devlin discussing the feasibility of a troop surge, then just being debated. Ricks, writing from Washington, DC, incorrectly suggested that the Marines in Anbar had concluded in the report that al Qaeda could not be defeated. Some months later, Ramadi re-inaugurated its annual 5-K race through the center of town, and the pack of runners included a number of US Marines. (Local jogger Ahmed Rashid took an early lead and won with a time of 16:17. At the finish line the provincial governor and the town's mayor presented him the award.)

With Colonel MacFarland's success largely ignored by the media, he, along with Major Niel Smith, offered his own account of the Anbar Awakening, which can be found on-line. Though participants in the events, their report compares favorably, in clarity, nuance, and fidelity to fact, to the news reporting by major new outlets or, in the parlance of bloggers, "the main-stream media"

Last year, in Congress, Senator Charles Schumer declared that "the violence in Anbar has gone down despite the surge, not because of the surge. The inability of American soldiers to protect these tribes from al Qaeda, said to these tribes: ‘We have to fight al Qaeda ourselves.'" Senator Obama echoed this last month when he suggested to CBS News that "We don't know how things would have gone without the troop surge," a policy which he had opposed. Sunday, Senator John Kerry, appearing on Mr. Obama's behalf, said the same.