By Andrew L. Jaffee

Good news from Iraq. Fewer U.S. troops and fewer civilians are being killed. Support for both Shiite and Sunni terrorists seems to be on the decline, also. First, the Beeb:

The number of violent civilian and military deaths in Iraq has continued to drop, figures for October suggest.

There is no single reliable source for statistics but a number agree on a marked improvement, correspondents say.

They say this is generally attributed to the US and Iraqi troop surge in and around Baghdad that began in February.

Analysts say other key factors are the halt in operations by Shia cleric Moqtada Sadr and the abandonment of al-Qaeda by some western Sunni tribes.

The BBC’s Jim Muir Baghdad says different sources do have different casualty figures for October but they all agree that the number of Iraqis killed by violence was again at a much lower level, as it had been in September. …

Then, the AP:

The monthly toll of U.S. service members who have died in Iraq is on track to being the lowest in nearly two years, with at least 36 troop deaths recorded as of Tuesday…