Baghdadâ??s Weary Start to Exhale as Security Improves

BAGHDAD, Nov. 19 â?? Five months ago, Suhaila al-Aasan lived in an oxygen tank factory with her husband and two sons, convinced that they would never go back to their apartment in Dora, a middle-class neighborhood in southern Baghdad.

Today she is home again, cooking by a sunlit window, sleeping beneath her favorite wedding picture. And yet, she and her family are remarkably alone. The half-dozen other apartments in her building echo with emptiness and, on most days, Iraqi soldiers are the only neighbors she sees.

â??I feel happy,â? she said, standing in her bedroom, between a flowered bedspread and a bullet hole in the wall. â??But my happiness is not complete. We need more people to come back. We need more people to feel safe.â?

Mrs. Aasan, 45, a Shiite librarian with an easy laugh, is living at the far end of Baghdadâ??s tentative recovery. She is one of many Iraqis who in recent weeks have begun to test where they can go and what they can do when fear no longer controls their every move.

The security improvements in most neighborhoods are real. Days now pass without a car bomb, after a high of 44 in the city in February. The number of bodies appearing on Baghdadâ??s streets has plummeted to about 5 a day, from as many as 35 eight months ago, and suicide bombings across Iraq fell to 16 in October, half the number of last summer and down sharply from a recent peak of 59 in March, the American military says.
Baghdad’s Weary Start to Exhale as Security Improves - New York Times

Coming from the New York Times.........I guess things really are improving. Just wait till the left wing candidates jump on the band wagon. :D

Have a good one!:s4: