THERE'S A TRUTH THE Democratic presidential candidates can't handle: the success of the "surge" in Iraq. The addition of American troops and the adoption of a new strategy of protecting the civilian population has now dramatically reduced the level of violence in Baghdad and pacified other parts of Iraq as well. But the Democratic candidates insist on pretending otherwise.

It isn't clear whether they were uninformed, out of touch, mistaken, politically fearful, or knowingly dishonest when they were asked to comment on the surge during an ABC television debate Saturday night in New Hampshire. In any case, their refusal to acknowledge success in Iraq marked a low point in the Democratic campaign.

The most disappointing answer came from Barack Obama, the frontrunner in the race and a candidate who touts himself as one who would end political polarization in Washington and forge bipartisan solutions. But he's not likely to produce any bipartisanship on Iraq.

Obama claimed the decision by Sunnis in Iraq to embrace American forces was a response to the Democratic capture of Congress in the 2006 election. Sunnis in Anbar province "started to see, after the Democrats were elected in 2006, you know what?" They saw the likelihood of a withdrawal of U.S. troops and feared they "would be left very vulnerable to the Shias," Obama said. So they joined the Americans.

This is a figment of Obama's imagination. There's no evidence for this explanation--quite the contrary. Even before the 2006 election, Sunnis had begun to turn against al Qaeda, their one-time ally

The Sunni rebellion has now spread to other provinces, particularly those with mixed Sunni-Shia populations. And political reconciliation between Sunnis and Shia is underway at the provincial level. Obama should have known this. Perhaps he did but was wary of veering from his anti-Iraq position. His bizarre take on the Sunnis remains exclusive to him.

Bill Richardson was worse than Obama. Calling Iraq "a massive failure," he made a string of inaccurate claims. He said there had been no reconciliation. Wrong. He said there had been no sharing of oil revenues. Wrong. He said the Iraq government had made no effort to train more security forces. Wrong. He said there was only a political solution in Iraq but not a military solution. The truth is, both are required.

John Edwards provided a whopper of his own. He said the withdrawal of British troops from southern Iraq caused "a significant reduction in violence." In fact, it was the British presence--not the withdrawal--for so many months that had pacified that region.

Hillary Clinton also refused to acknowledge any success in Iraq. She reaffirmed what she told General David Petraeus, the American commander in Iraq, last September during a Senate hearing. Then, she said she had to "suspend disbelief" to accept Petraeus's testimony that the surge was working.

Did she still feel that way about the surge? "That's right," Clinton told debate moderator Charles Gibson, the ABC News anchor. "Because, remember, the purpose behind the surge was to create the space and time for political reconciliation, for the Iraqi government to do what only it can do and trying to deal with the myriad of unresolved problems that confront it."