What happened to Al Qaeda in Baghdad?

Crossposted from Left Toon Lane, Bilerico Project & My Left Wing click to enlargeGo read this full bore, 100% Bingo article by Kossack, Brandon Friedman. From the diary... As U.S. casualties have continued to drop, many people on the anti-Bush side of the aisle have begun to quietly panic in recent days over this question: "Could George W. Bush and Frederick Kagan have possibly been right about the surge?" Simply put, the answer is no. The surge is not working and George W. Bush and Frederick Kagan were not right. Despite what right-wing blogs are saying, and despite what conservative observers are noting, the plunge in violence is actually the result of an Iraqi political decision made by and implemented by Iraqis—and the drop has little to do with the "surge"—an infusion of 30,000 troops (which wouldn’t fill a Major League stadium) into Baghdad, a city of six million people. What’s happening is really simple—and it’s happening in plain sight, in the traditional media. But it just so happens that, as far as I can tell, no one is connecting the dots. As Friedman points out, The Madhi Army went into a state of cease fire and the violence greatly retracted. Here is my question, where is Al Qaeda? We have been told for months about Al Qaeda being in Iraq and Bush Administration has been trumpeting Al Qaeda as a reason for extending the war in Iraq. Following that line of questioning, where are the Iranian elements? You know, the Iranians that have flooded Baghdad over the years with the sole purposes to kill Americans? What happened to them? Maybe the Iranians and Al Qaeda weren't there to begin with? Maybe this really was a civil war? It isn't the first time Bush claimed something was in Iraq and it turned out it wasn't there. Anyone remember the weapons of mass destruction?