Amidst the neverending cavalcade of depressing news from the Middle East, here’s a link to some positive news, from the AFP of all places: Ramadi defended by insurgents turned police.

“First we build police stations outside of the city, to clean the suburbs, then we push into the city,” explained Lieutenant Colonel Jim Lechner, the deputy commander of the US army’s 1st Brigade, responsible for Ramadi.

“Some of them are former insurgents — they were shooting at us just three months ago,” admitted Lechner, who still wears the insignia patch of the 3rd Ranger Battalion he served with in the 1993 Mogadishu operation immortalized in the film “Blackhawk Down.”

“They may not like Americans, but they hate al-Qaeda,” he said.

Ramadi once had few police officers, but with many of the province’s powerful tribes banding together against al-Qaeda, a flood of recruits has swelled the police which now count more than 1,000 men in their ranks.

Initially US and Iraqi soldiers will move into areas with the police before eventually, hopefully, turning control of cleared neighborhoods entirely over to them and allowing US forces to leave.

“The only way out of here is teaching these guys,” said Captain Stewart McFall, director of Ramadi’s Phoenix Academy that gives the recruits their final week of training after a six-week training course in Jordan or Baghdad.

“We have international police liaison officers, Navy Seals and army instructors,” said McFall.

“They receive as good training as the Americans — it’s one of the reasons why IPs in this area have been so successful,” he added, using the common abbreviation for the Iraqi police.

Behind him, Iraqi cadets too part in a training exercise on searching a vehicle filled with US soldiers.

“You don’t have to rough him up, he hasn’t done anything,” said instructor Sergeant Michael Gavin. “If you find a weapon, that’s when you get rough.”

In a bizarre reversal of roles, the trainees, some of whom were once insurgents, were able to “arrest” the US soldiers, make them kneel on the ground and search them — a task they performed with relish.

“I joined up because I’ve had enough of these terrorist attacks,” said 31-year-old recruit Sabah Jassim. “We’ve been afraid of them for too long, their time is over.”

It has some ambiguity and some messiness, but it’s progress, and it’s continuing to go on despite the air of doom and surrender that seems to have engulfed Washington DC.

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And speaking of bad news in the Middle East, Gateway Pundit has this telling look at the slow motion (so far) coup unfolding in Beirut.

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