So, naturally, the Associated Press goes into full spin mode.

BAGHDAD—American military deaths for July rose to 73 on Tuesday with the report of a Marine killed in combat, but the toll was still the lowest in eight months as the U.S. said it was gaining control of former militant strongholds.

By contrast, July was the second-deadliest month for Iraqis so far this year, according to an Associated Press tally.

That last sentence, I’m sure, was meant to convey the idea that Iraq is still hopeless.  Yet the fact that the Iraqi death toll is going up as ours is going down is evidence of Iraqis stepping to the front of this war.  Which is what we’ve wanted all along, no?

Anyway, after spending two sentences on the topic laid out on the headline the article veers off into nine paragraphs of unrelated news about the political turmoil in Iraq before getting back to the point:

American officials credited the drop in U.S. casualties with the new strategies put in place by commander Gen. David Petraeus, who has taken the fight to the enemy rather than keeping forces in defensive bases.

“We’re chasing them to areas where they’re not so well prepared and they don’t have time to prepare, so chances are we will have fewer casualties,” a senior U.S. military official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment on the sensitive operations. “The tactical momentum has shifted to us.”

The No. 2 commander in Iraq, Lt. Gen. Ray Odierno, expressed cautious optimism last week about the decline in deaths.

He said casualties had increased as U.S. forces expanded operations into militant strongholds in the initial stages of the five-month-old security crackdown to clamp off violence in Baghdad. Now, he said, casualties were dropping as Americans gained control in those areas.

Gee, it’s almost like the surge is working or something.  Now if we could just get the media to report that in a straight-forward manner, we’d really be getting somewhere.