More encouraging signs:

Recent successes in killing or capturing top Taliban leaders have shaken the confidence of the militant organization and raised gnawing doubts in the minds of front-line fighters, the top allied leader in Afghanistan said Thursday.

"You see a weakening of the organization's confidence," U.S. Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal told USA TODAY at his headquarters in Kabul.

If this series of successes were occurring under Bush/Cheney, you'd be hearing about it via a two-ton megaphone. Instead, this enormously significant progress in the region is receiving woefully inadequate coverage -- certainly when compared to what we were accustomed to with the prior administration.