Iraq: What would happen if the U.S. won a war but the media didn't tell the American public? Apparently, we have to rely on a British newspaper for the news that we've defeated the  last remnants of al-Qaida in  Iraq .

London's Sunday Times called it 'the culmination of one of the most spectacular  victories of the war on terror.' A terrorist force that once numbered  more than 12,000, with strongholds in the west and central regions of Iraq, has over two years been reduced to a mere 1,200 fighters, backed against the wall in the northern city of Mosul.

The destruction of al-Qaida in Iraq (AQI) is one of the most unlikely and unforeseen events in the long history of American warfare. We can thank President Bush's surge strategy, in which he bucked both Republican and Democratic leaders in Washington by increasing our forces there instead of surrendering.

We  can also thank the leadership of the new general he placed in charge there, David Petraeus, who may be the foremost expert in the world  on counter-insurgency warfare. And we can thank those serving in our  military in  Iraq who engaged local Iraqi tribal leaders and convinced them America was their friend and  AQI their enemy.

Al-Qaida's loss of the hearts and minds of ordinary Iraqis began in  Anbar Province , which had been written off as a basket case, and spread out from there.

Now, in Operation Lion's Roar the Iraqi army and  the  U.S. 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment is destroying the fraction of terrorists who are left.  More than 1,000 AQI operatives have already been  apprehended.

Sunday Times reporter Marie Colvin, traveling  with Iraqi forces in Mosul, found little AQI presence even in  bullet-ridden residential areas that were once insurgency strongholds,  and reported that the terrorists have lost control of its Mosul urban  base, with what is left of the organization having fled south into  the countryside.

Meanwhile, the State Department reports that Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's government has achieved 'satisfactory' progress on 15 of the 18 political benchmarks 'a big  change for the better from a year ago.'

Things are going so well that Maliki has even  for the first time floated the idea of a timetable for withdrawal of American forces. He did so while visiting the United Arab Emirates, which over the weekend announced that it was forgiving almost $7 billion of debt owed by Baghdad, an impressive vote of confidence from a fellow Arab state in the future of a free Iraq.

But where are the headlines and the front-page stories about all this good news? As the Media Research Center pointed out last week, 'the  CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News and CNN's Anderson Cooper 360 were silent Tuesday night about the benchmarks 'that signaled political progress.'

The war in Iraq has been turned around 180 degrees both militarily and politically because the president stuck to his guns. Yet apart from IBD, Fox News Channel and parts of the foreign press, the media don't seem to consider this historic event a big story.

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Addendum:  The reason you haven't seen this on American television or read about it in the American press is simple--journalism is 'dead' in this country.  They are controlled by Liberals who would rather see our troops defeated than recognize a successful response to 9/11