New York Times: 

The American military handed over responsibility for the security of the western province of Anbar, once a stronghold of the Sunni insurgency and one of the most violent regions in Iraq, to the Iraqi government on Monday, a long-delayed milestone.

The transfer was made possible, Iraqi and American officials said, by an increase in Iraqi security forces and a reduction of violence largely attributed to the local forces known as Awakening Councils. It is the first handover of a province bordering Baghdad, where there has been intense sectarian conflict. Other provinces that have been shifted to Iraqi control have been in the less troublesome south and in the northern Kurdish region.

Meanwhile, Iraqpundit has thoughts on Obama:

Barack Obama meant to tell us he would make the better president, but he actually gave us plenty of reasons why John McCain would be better for the job.

After listening to Obama’s speech, one can’t help but wonder how he plans to improve U.S. relations with Muslim and other countries.

For example, he said, he “made clear that we must take out Osama bin Laden and his lieutenants if we have them in our sights.” For one thing, Obama implies that all those Americans working day and night in counter-terrorism and other jobs have been twiddling their thumbs instead of going after al-Qaeda. Obama said, “John McCain likes to say that he’ll follow bin Laden to the Gates of Hell - but he won’t even go to the cave where he lives.”

True, President McCain would not attack a cave in Pakistan, because McCain knows the country is an ally. He doesn’t need advisers to explain these details. Obama should remember from his earlier mistakes that it’s not cool to attack Pakistan.

To Iraqi ears, Obama’s speech was unfriendly, to say the least. He paints the Iraqis as useless irritants. He said: “And today, as my call for a time frame to remove our troops from Iraq has been echoed by the Iraqi government and even the Bush Administration,” Actually that’s not true, neither wants a U.S. withdrawal shortly after inauguration day.

Here’s where Obama shows his lack of familiarity with international relations: He argued that we have resisted leaving Iraq “even after we learned that Iraq has a $79 billion surplus while we’re wallowing in deficits.”

Sure the Iraqi government has been dragging its feet. But is his approach really the way to deal with them? Obama makes it sound as though Baghdad is building shopping malls, ice-skating rinks, virtual golf and snow-skiing facilities. If he persuades people that is the case, and that the savage Iraqis are busy killing each other in that luxurious environment, then it’s okay to abandon them to the mercy of al-Qaeda and the Iran-backed Shiite militias.

Obama, of course, talks as though he can turn off the war at will. The nominee said, “John McCain stands alone in his stubborn refusal to end a misguided war.”

And Obama has the answer: “I will end this war in Iraq responsibly, and finish the fight against al-Qaeda and the Taleban in Afghanistan.”

If Obama were ready for the White House, he would know there is no such thing as refusing to end the war. We can’t tell al-Qaeda and the Shiite militias what to do. We have to defeat them. And Obama doesn’t even realize that when he suggests that Iraq is a disaster, he implies that U.S. troops and Gen. Petraeus have been doing a lousy job.

The presidential candidate doesn’t understand what work it took to get to where Iraq is today, where violence is down and the U.S. handed Iraqis control of the tenth province out of 18.

Barack Obama accidentally made a good argument against himself when he spoke last night. He meant to criticize McCain, but he instead described himself: “If you don’t have a record to run on, then you paint your opponent as someone people should run from.”