This is definitely good news.

Attacks by insurgents and rival sectarian militias have fallen up to 80 percent in Baghdad and concrete blast walls that divide the capital can soon be removed, a senior Iraqi military official said on Saturday.

Nice number. Didn’t even know about the blast walls. Interesting.

The United States says attacks have fallen across Iraq by 60 percent since June on the back of security clampdowns, 30,000 extra U.S. troops and a ceasefire ordered by Shi’ite cleric and militia leader Moqtada al-Sadr.

Key to the fall in violence was also a decision by Sunni Arab tribal leaders to turn against al Qaeda in late 2006 and form neighborhood security units, which man checkpoints and provide tips on militant hideouts.

The surge is working, good going. And the Iraqis helping of course, nothing like teamwork.

The picture after the picture with the whiskers.

Sunday, I am hosting the Carnival of the Cats. Submit here or email your cats to carnivalofthecats(at)gmail.com. Nice to share your kitties.

Other fine weekend catting:

Bad Kitty Cats Festival of Chaos at Bad Kitty Cats
Optional Theme - Valentine’s Edition
Friday Ark at the Modulator always
Weekend Cat Blogging at Life From A Cat’s Perspective

Saw the doc yesterday, assistant gave me a mini memory test which I passed, asked me orientation questions then gave me three words to remember. Asked me to repeat them several times which I did then asked me after a minute what they were, which words I remembered.

Had they asked me after five minutes, I would have only said the one word I remembered. Still only remember the one which was apple. Wonder why I remember that word, heh.

So after a brief exam and even briefer discussion, he changed my meds around, gave me a script for Ambien. Which Ambien also has the potential side effect of causing memory loss. As do some of my other meds which he didn’t stop. As does the MS.

Mind you, other docs have been hesitant to mess with my meds for fear of adverse effects. We’ll see what this does.

We didn’t even get into the other cognitive deficits I have, all of which started with one exacerbation some time back and which have only gotten worse, mostly cause I didn’t remember to bring them up.

So if my memory still sucks in three months I’m to see him back.

I’ll be back.

I didn’t even take the Ambien last night cause I was so tired. Was asleep nineish.

That’s a pretty tall order here considering Iran’s denial in the past.

The U.S. on Friday demanded that Iran confess to trying to make atomic weapons, suggesting that anything short of that would doom an International Atomic Energy Agency probe of Tehran’s nuclear past.

The call by Gregory L. Schulte, chief U.S. delegate to the Vienna-based IAEA, appeared to set the bar insurmountably high for the investigation by the U.N. agency’s chief, Mohamed ElBaradei.

There is only about a week left before he reports on the probe’s progress, and Iran has steadfastly denied ever working on a nuclear weapons program.

We’ll see what he reports, not holding my breath. Seems they have been holding out. At least there’s more than that NIE report indicated.

Schulte spoke a day after diplomats told The Associated Press that the U.S. had recently shared new intelligence on alleged Iranian nuclear weapons work. One of them also said that Washington also gave the IAEA permission to confront Iran with at least some of the evidence in an attempt to pry details out of the Islamic republic on the activities.

Won’t happen, they are highly unlikely at this date to acknowledge anything. I wanted to comment yesterday but I was too tired, went to bed really early too.