I still believe the war in Iraq and the war on terror are two separate things.   But since there is so much focus on Iraq now, I came across this recent assessment of the surge.  It's from an Iraq point of view, something we don't hear often enough.  
Violence is down in Iraq but I find it troubling to call our misadventure there a success.   Lowering the level of violence does not change the fact that had this administration been competent and strategically smarter, we wouldn't have had any violence in Iraq to lower.  
There are those who would do the same thing again--they say it was worth it because Saddam Hussein was a brutal dictator.  Maybe so, but he was a brutal dictator with no weapons of mass destruction.  None.  He didn't pose a threat to the United States, nor was he associated in any way at all with Al Qaeda.  
There are those who only want you to look at what they consider the "successful" part of the war in Iraq--the surge and forget about the vote to wage the war in the first place.  It's lasted five years but we only want you to consider  20% of our judgment, not the other 80%.   
It's like they're cherry-picking history and saying, see, we were right.  
Wrong.