Following up on the post below about the new Pentagon report on violence in Iraq, which seems to contradict Gen. Petraeus's claims, here's more. The Post notes that the report says that "the security environment in southern Iraq took a notable turn for the worse in August."

That would have been nice to know, don't you think?

Here's another point -- one that came up in our Juan Cole TPMtv interview, but didn't make it into our segment. Cole said that one of the reasons violence is so far down in al Anbar is -- among other reasons -- that in Fallujah the US military has put in place a curfew on vehicular traffic. Basically, according to Cole, with the exception of some buses and presumably state vehicles, people can't drive cars in the city. And not surprisingly that's cut the rate of car bombings dramatically.

That's certainly a draconian approach. But if it's effective it may well be a good idea to ramp down extreme levels of violence. But Cole said that the rule was put in place in May and scheduled to be ended in September. And that made him suspicious as to whether the move was intended to push violence numbers down for Gen. Petraeus.

Does anyone know more about this?