Pew reports that Americans are feeling more positive about Iraq:

For the first time in a long time, nearly half of Americans express positive opinions about the situation in Iraq. A growing number says the U.S. war effort is going well, while greater percentages also believe the United States is making progress in reducing the number of Iraqi casualties, defeating the insurgents and preventing a civil war in Iraq.

Roughly half of the public (48%) believes the U.S. military effort in Iraq is going very or fairly well. Judgments about the overall situation in Iraq have been improving steadily since the summer. As recently as June, only about a third of Americans (34%) said things were going well in Iraq.

No doubt people are expressing more positive opinions because Iraq is hardly ever in the news anymore—they’re not seeing it on their TV screens—as I mentioned here the other day. Americans are figuring out that things are better in Iraq simply by the absence of MSM coverage.

So it goes. As for what all this means—well, I think it spells bad news for rabidly antiwar Democrats.

The Urge to Purge lives on in the fever swamps of the nutty left. The efforts to take down Joe Klein continue apace:

Glenn Greenwald has been waging his own little war against Time columnist Joe Klein for more than a week now owing to what Greenwald says was a “factually false” description of the FISA legislation in the House in Klein’s latest piece.

Kos himself has since joined the pile on, here, and now Greenwald has kicked it up a notch, teaming up with the “tenacious” Jane Hamsher to go after Klein’s editor.

The whole thing is a bit ridiculous, but, like a battle between the Giants and Cowboys, it’s fun to watch and root for injuries.

Yep.

Agence France-Press reports that there’s big, big trouble in France:

Monday night’s violence left several buildings damaged by fire in Villiers, just north of Paris, including a tax office, a supermarket, a library and a nursery school, as well as 63 vehicles. Six people were arrested during the troubles, which lasted about six hours, police said.

A report from Le Monde newspaper described boys as young as 13 taking orders from their elders to torch buildings and forming battle ranks against the police, vowing to “do in” a “pig” — a police officer.

Authorities said guns were used against police, whose unions described the violence as worse than the rioting that hit hundreds of French cities in November 2005 — also sparked by the deaths of two youths.

According to police figures, 82 officers were injured Monday night, four of them seriously after being hit by buckshot from hunting weapons.

The Synergie police union said the youths were using “urban guerrilla” tactics.

Wouldn’t it be ironic if the Iraq war was negotiated into some kind of closure and the Sunni Arabs of the Middle East stood up to the mean mullahocracy of Iran … and then Europe became prey to urban guerrilla warfare?

Via GalleyCat, I am delighted to discover that John Updike, the dinosaur of publishing, writes about real dinosaurs for the new issue of National Geographic.

How utterly fitting.

Agence France-Press reports thatA’jad scolded Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah for consorting with the enemy:

“I wish the name of Saudi Arabia was not among those attending the Annapolis conference,” Ahmadinejad told the king late Sunday, according to state news agency IRNA.

“Arab countries should be watchful in the face of the plots and deception of the Zionist enemy,” he added.

Focusing on “the Zionist enemy” of course detracts attention from the actual state of affairs that has Iran in a tizzy:

The Islamic republic — which has made non-recognition of Israel one of its main ideological themes — has been left isolated by the attendance at the meeting of its chief regional ally Syria as well as Saudi Arabia.

This is the second time in two years that the major Sunni players in the Middle East have signaled their intense displeasure with Iran and its acolytes and clients. An interesting development.