By Melanie Phillips

In a superb spread a week ago in the Wall Street Journal (subscription only) about the situation in Iraq, the distinguished analyst Fouad Ajami wrote about Sheikh Abdul Sattar Abu Reisha, the Sunni leader who turned against al Qaeda and reached an accommodation with America — and who was killed three days later in a roadside bomb. But the story Ajami related was much bigger than that sheikh, vital and charismatic though he had been. It was the story of how the Anbar province had been transformed from a theatre of insurgency against America to a bulwark against al Qaeda. that is what the

‘We fought with our own weapons. I myself fought al Qaeda with my own funds. The Americans were slow to understand our sahwa, our awakening. But they have come around of late. The Americans are harmless; they don’t know Iraq. But all that is in the past, and now the Americans have a wise and able military commander on the scene, and the public of the Anbar have found their way. In the Anbar, they now know that the menace comes from Iran, not from the Americans.’

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Original post by Ted Belman