al Qaeda's Global Campaign in Iraq

General David Petraeus, during a press conference this week:

Iraq is in fact the central front of al Qaeda's global campaign, and we devote considerable resources to the fight against al Qaeda Iraq. We have achieved some notable successes in the past few months: Killing the security emir of eastern Anbar province, detaining a number of key network leaders, discovering how various elements of how al Qaeda Iraq operate, taking apart a car bomb network that had killed 650 citizens of Baghdad, and destroying several significant car bomb factories. Nonetheless, al Qaeda Iraq remains a formidable foe with considerable resilience and the capability to produce horrific attacks, but a group whose ideology and methods have increasingly alienated many in Iraq. This group's activities must be significantly disrupted at the least for the new Iraq to succeed, and it has been heartening to see Sunni Arabs in Anbar province and several other areas turning against al Qaeda and joining the Iraqi security forces to fight against it - that has been a very significant development.