Progress?

Jules Crittenden takes a look behind the headlines to note that the intensive search operations for our missing soldiers in Iraq have led to a dramatic decease in al Qaeda activity in the so-called "Triangle of Death." He's got a dozen links, al worth reading.

Meanwhile, my buddy Michael Yon is in al Anbar, once al Qaeda's base of operations and the heart of the Sunni insurgency, and is bored out of his mind. This is the second time he's mentioned a lack of action there (here's the first) in as many days. He could get used to this. I think we all could, American and Iraqi alike.

Other parts of Iraq were not as quiet.

Sheikh Azhar al-Dulaymi, the Iranian-trained mastermind of the Karbala raid that killed five American soldiers killed in late January, was killed in Sadr City by U.S. forces.

Elsewhere in Iraq, seven U.S. soldiers were killed over the weekend, along with dozens of Iraqi civilians. Eight insurgents were killed and almost three dozen more were captured in a series of raids on Karmah, south of Baghdad.

Elsewhere in the War on Terror, Lebanese Army units fought intense battles with an al Qaeda-aligned group outside Tripoli. Speculation is that the group is backed by Syrian military intelligence at the behest of Syrian dictator Bashir Assad. The group is apparently led by Shaker al-Absi, a Syrian Air Force veteran that is thought to have fought against U.S. forces in Iraq and who is believed to have had links to al Qaeda in Iraq's former leader, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. According to a Washington Post report, on the terrorists killed, Saddam El-Hajdib , was a suspect in a failed train bombing in Germany.

Meanwhile, the McCain-Kennedy Illegal Alien Exploitation and Terrorist Proliferation Bill is under debate in the U.S. Senate. The bill would offer official documentation to illegal aliens without being able to verify who they actually are or where they come from, and would allow terrorists like the three illegal alien brothers who crossed over the Mexican border at Brownsville and were recently arrested plotting a terrorist attack on Fort Dix to continue to penetrate this country, now with the added bonus of being able to get legal status.

McCain and Republicans in the House and Senate want cheap labor at indentured servitude prices, while Democrats, knowing that illegals tend to break Democrat roughly 5:1 because of the Marxist/socialist politics of their home nations, hope to use illegals to establish an overwhelming permanent Democratic majority.

In the end, we're looking at a Congress that is willing to pass a law that would enable Osama bin Laden himself to get legal status here in the United States.

That is not a comment I'm making up; it comes directly from Mike Cutler, a 30-year veteran of the U.S. Immigration Service, who thinks the Senate bill should be referred to as the Terrorist Assistance and Facilitation Act of 2007.

I hate Mondays.