I'm back to agreeing with Ralph Peters (sans his use of "mini-surge," blech):

As you read these lines, our troops are in the midst of Operation Phantom Phoenix, a "mini-surge" to squeeze al Qaeda and its fast-dwindling band of allies out of their few remaining safe havens in Iraq.

Iraqi troops fight beside us against a common enemy. Vast swaths of the country enjoy a newborn peace. Commerce thrives again. At the provincial and local levels, the political progress has been remarkable.

As for Operation Phantom Phoenix, our commanders expected terrorist dead-enders to put up a fight. Instead, they ran, leaving behind only booby traps and disgust among the Iraqis they tormented far too long.

Well, they can run, but they can't hide. We dropped 20 tons of bombs on 40 terrorist targets yesterday, including safe houses, weapons caches and IED factories. In a late-afternoon exchange with The Post, Gen. David Petraeus characterized our current ops as "executing aggressively, pursuing tenaciously."

The headlines at home? "Nine American Soldiers Killed." No mention of progress or a fleeing enemy on the front pages. Just dead soldiers.

Unable to credibly deny the progress in Iraq, the media has traveled down other roads to spin the surge as a failure. Though I have noticed these reach-back stories, where the press will revisit old territory for negative headlines, are becoming few and far between. Today, for example, two headlines from Iraq are dominating the news cycle: the 21 terrorists killed in yesterday's air strikes and the proposed handover of Anbar to the Iraqi government.

It's difficult to make dead tangos and provincial handoffs sound negative, even for this press corps.