Teresita; I still point to what I wrote above. The Anbar Awakening was simply a local response to effective COIN tactics properly employed by COL MacFarland, not a wave that was going to spread across the nation without the assistance of the surge.

The surge itself was not the producer of such events, but rather the availability of the forces needed to employ Petraeus’ excellent COIN strategy and tactics. The Anbar Awakening was enabled to spread by the surge.

To dicker over when the “Awakening” occurred relative to the surge is another petty distractor. If you click the (-) part on the ZOOM bar and pull away from the map a little, you will see that the Anbar Awakening was replicated as part of the employment of the forces made available in-country by the surge.

The surge without the tactics would have been a disaster, but the tactics without the surge would have been less effective.

Contrast this with the ISG’s recommendations to start the Vietnamization of the war. I mean, the Iraqification… oh, never mind; it would have worked out the same way that the first such dropping of the ball did. The Iraqis would have fallen on their faces and we would have witnessed helicopters taking off from roofs in the Green Zone filled with Americans, Press, and selected Iraqis fleeing for their lives as the various parties moved in to carve Iraq into fiefdoms.