Would you like dressing and gravy with that crow?

Jack Kelly:

While most of us were enjoying turkey for Thanksgiving dinner, Rep. Jack Murtha (D-Johnstown), was eating a little crow.

"I think the surge is working," Rep. Murtha said last week after a quick holiday visit to Iraq.

The observation isn't remarkable. The signs of progress in Iraq are so obvious that even the New York Times has begun to report them. For, instance, U.S. deaths in Iraq in November (35, 26 in combat) were the lowest since March of 2006. Iraqi civilian deaths were about a third of what they had been in November of last year.

But it was remarkable coming from Rep. Murtha, who declared the troop surge a failure before it had begun. At a news conference on the eve of his trip, he'd accused the Pentagon of lying when it reported good news: "Because the Pentagon said it, you believe it?" he yelled at a reporter who'd cited statistics showing improvement.

Because the news media have been slow to report the changes in Iraq, the self-deluded can continue to deny that what's happening is really happening. A caller insisted to me that a suicide car bombing in Ramadi Nov. 21st in which six Iraqis died "proves" that al Qaida really isn't being defeated.

The attack was the first in Ramadi in four or five months, and hasn't been repeated since, said Col. John Charlton, commander of the Army-Marine brigade in Ramadi.

The bomb itself was an indicator of how much the capabilities of the terrorists have fallen, Col. Charlton said in a telephone conversation.

"It was very low yield, about 60 lbs," he said. "Back in February, March, we'd see VBIEDs with 1,000, 2,000 lbs of explosives."

"There's nothing bad happening here," Col. Charlton said. "There's a lot of good things happening. We had a parade here in Ramadi that involved all of the Iraqi security forces. They did it in October, because last October al Qaida had a parade, and the Iraqis wanted a bigger and better parade."

The parade and its significance drew no attention from the news media. "Coverage has really dropped off," Col. Charlton said.

But if progress continues, it will be difficult for the news media to play down.

...

There is more. The expression was born out of Napoleon's retreat from Moscow when the surviving French soldiers were so short of food that they resorted to killing and eating crows. Murtha may not be that desperate for food, but I think he and Pelosi are still desperate for defeat in Iraq. They will only get more desperate in the coming weeks. Perhaps they need to cancel their surrender plans with al Qaeda and arrange terms of surrender to President Bush. As Jules Crittenden recently wrote, "I believe that what Murtha is saying is that he is ready to discuss surrender terms, but would like to be allowed to keep his sword."