This isn’t news to the people who’ve been reading Michaels Yon and Totten, but the source of this story is what’s most surprising–Der Spiegel:

Ramadi is an irritating contradiction of almost everything the world thinks it knows about Iraq — it is proof that the US military is more successful than the world wants to believe. Ramadi demonstrates that large parts of Iraq — not just Anbar Province, but also many other rural areas along the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers — are essentially pacified today. This is news the world doesn’t hear: Ramadi, long a hotbed of unrest, a city that once formed the southwestern tip of the notorious “Sunni Triangle,” is now telling a different story, a story of Americans who came here as liberators, became hated occupiers and are now the protectors of Iraqi reconstruction.

Many of Herr Fitner’s journalistic brethren may not be very happy with him. It’s the wrong template. Doesn’t he know that we’re supposed to be losing?

It should also be noted that he’s no apologist for the administration. In fact, he repeats the same tired old myths and straw men:

But there is little talk of these developments outside of Iraq. The world continues to debate the Bush administration’s lies, which hang over the entire operation like a curse, concealing its successes. The lies are legend, and they continue to color the picture the world paints of Iraq.

No one can forget how the hawks twisted the truth to engineer reasons to go to war — the made-up stories of Saddam Hussein as a mastermind behind the Sept. 11 attacks and the trumped-up reports about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. President George W. Bush himself repeatedly told his people and the rest of world horrible fairy tales, painting the most glaring of disaster scenarios, talking ad nauseam about unmanned Iraqi drones that, in his imagination, posed a threat to the US.

Of course, the administration never claimed that Saddam was behind 911, and there is no evidence that anyone in the administration has ever “lied” about the war. If Bush lied, so did many Democrats who believed the same things. But perhaps a German doesn’t understand the meaning of the English word “lie.” Unfortunately, many on the left don’t seem to, either. In fact, it is often their first resort when confronted with facts that they find unpleasant. At least this reporter is willing to report accurately what he finds on the ground in Iraq.