I won that wager. I had written that “the Iraqi Army’s military operation in Basra will be a spectacular win against disorder and Iranian influence”. And I was right.

Of course, most western media outlets are declaring Muqtada al-Sadr and Iran as the victors of Operation Cavalry Charge. Nothing could be furthest from the truth.
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Maliki is not supposed to be a performing monkey for the western media. His job entails doing the very kind of things he’d gone and got accomplished in Basra. Today, Basra is calm and Iraq’s national army is in charge, not the Mahdi’s. Well done, Mr. Maliki.

Then there is this piece by Jack Kelly, drawing on many different sources, including embeds.

It is rare in the annals of war for the side that is winning to seek a cease-fire. “The Iraq army has cordoned off the city and is methodically advancing to allow residents to leave the city amidst the fighting, militants to turn over arms, while gradually isolating the factions they intend to uproot,” a Marine liaison officer to the Iraqi security forces said in an e-mail Tuesday to radio talk show host Hugh Hewitt.
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“Sources in Basra tell Time that there has been a large-scale retreat in the oil-rich port city because of low morale and because ammunition is low due to the closure of the Iranian border,” the magazine’s Web site reported.

“They were running short of ammunition, food, and water,” a U.S. military officer told Bill Roggio, editor of the Web-based Long War Journal. “In short, [the Mahdi Army] had no ability to sustain the effort.”
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Mr. Roggio said his sources in the U.S. military tell him the Mahdi Army was getting pounded. “According to an unofficial tally … 571 Mahdi army fighters have been killed, 881 have been wounded, 490 have been captured, and 30 have surrendered over the course of seven days of fighting. … The U.S. and Iraqi military never came close to inflicting casualties at such a high rate during the height of major combat operations against al-Qaeda in Iraq during the summer and fall of 2007.”

The Mahdi Army has won by surviving, media analysts say. But it seems apparent the Mahdi Army survived by quitting.

So the Sadrist in Sadr City started lobbing ordnance into the Green Zone, but not since the following began.
US soldiers move into Sadr City.
US and Iraqi forces take the battle to Moqtada al-Sadr’s doorstep.
Pat, you really should do more reading.

Despite considerable U.S. expenditures on oil and electricity infrastructure, oil exports and the supply of electricity and other services have not risen significantly since 2004.

According to the Brookings Institute (page 40),as of Sep 07, the number of kilowatt hours produced were the highest since the invasion, and 31% higher than prewar levels. Had Pat bothered to check the source that the Post cited on his own, rather than accept their reporting as the sole authority, he would have found that the State Department’s Iraq Weekly Status Report, as of 2 Apr 08, showed the same info cited in the Post, but with just a teensy-weensy difference. On page 22, the following:

ECONOMIC –Electricity
•Electricity supply and demand date was unavailable for March 28, 29, or 31. The averages for March 26-April 1 therefore were calculated from data for the other four days of that period. For March 26-April 1, daily electricity demand was 23% above the same period last year. Daily supply from the grid was 8% above the year-earlier period and met 58% of demand, compared with 66% for the year-earlier period.
•Data on hours of power was available through March 26. For March 20-26, average hours of power from the grid after meeting demand from essential services: Baghdad 12.0 and nationwide 14.3. Year-ago levels were Baghdad 5.7 and nationwide 12.0.

Did you notice the difference? There is the actual report, right in front of your eyes, but rather than do your own research, you chose to believe what the Post had to say, and bore us with their bias, once again. I would say those gains were significant, especially considering how bad the infrastructure was before the invasion.
In fact, go through the entire report, it might hurt the moonbat in your head, but then again, this is the start of a new baseball season, so hope springs eternal.

[...] why the United States is still paying for Iraqi domestic needs ranging from military training to garbage pickup when the Maliki government has $30 billion in reserves — held in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and the Bank for International Settlements in Switzerland — as well as $10 billion in a development fund, significant budgetary surpluses from previous years and a projected 7 percent economic growth rate for 2008.

[...]

Although the United States has spent nearly all of the approximately $21 billion appropriated for Iraqi reconstruction since 2003, $500 million has been budgeted annually for the past three years for the Commander’s Emergency Response Program, distributed by U.S. officers on the ground for local development efforts.

Despite considerable U.S. expenditures on oil and electricity infrastructure, oil exports and the supply of electricity and other services have not risen significantly since 2004. In early April, according to State Department statistics, the electricity supply met 58 percent of demand, compared with 66 percent a year earlier. The International Committee of the Red Cross reported last month that “millions of Iraqis have insufficient access to clean water, sanitation and health care.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/07/AR2008040702806.html?hpid=topnews

What is victory? Which goal post can you point me to this year?

5 years after the Glorious Invasion to Save Civilization and we can’t even hold the Green Zone. Roll over, General Patton.