The coming month is expected to be pivotal in determining the course of the war, owing to the impending briefing before Congress by the senior military leader and ambassador in Iraq. Over the days of summer it began to look like the death ledger heaved upon us daily by most of the media would become less relevant to the Democratic leadership strategy. Not only have the vaunted counter-insurgency tactics of Petraeus wooed former insurgent enemies onto the anti-al Qaeda team, but the key media metric of American deaths has failed the Democrats in a major way. It was only last June when Senate Majority leader Harry Reid (D-NV) and House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) sent President Bush a letter claiming that the surge in Iraq had failed. Their pronouncement was partially based on that grim ledger of  U.S. casualties. The June letter, sent before the deployment of an additional 30,000 troops had even been completed read "In fact, the last two months of the...(Read Full Post)