The Iraqis step up and the US stands down. An interesting development:

Former Sunni insurgents asked the United States to stay away, and then ambushed members of Al Qaeda in Iraq, killing 18 in a battle that raged for hours north of Baghdad, an ex-insurgent leader and Iraqi police said yesterday…
Meanwhile, farther east, in Diyala Province, members of another former insurgent group, the 1920s Revolution Brigades, launched a military-style operation yesterday against Al Qaeda in Iraq, the Iraqi Army said…
Afterward, hundreds of people paraded through Buhriz, about 35 miles north of Baghdad, witnesses said. Many danced and fired their guns into the air, shouting “Down with Al Qaeda!” and “Diyala is for all Iraqis!”

The al-Qaeda strategy of slaughtering large numbers of fellow Muslims appears to have caught up with them.