Here it is, just days after he declared victory in the tortured Democratic nomination process, and already Barack Obama has a bit of a dilemma on his hands. And it doesn't have anything to do with whether or not he should tab Hillary Clinton as his running mate. It has to do with good news emerging from Iraq.

All who have closely followed this primary marathon know full well that 1) Mr. Obama has been opposed to the Iraq war from the git-go (or so he consistently maintains), and 2) one of his first acts as president would be to initiate a full-scale withdrawal of our troops in that embattled nation.
But what if positive news continues to dribble out of Iraq? Mr. Obama would then face a critical decision — whether to revise his stance (and alienate a goodly portion of his base), or stick to his guns and risk the charge of ignorance to the realities on the ground. Whatever Mr. Obama does, presumptive GOP candidate John McCain, who has indomitably backed the war effort, will pounce.

And what has composed the recent spate of good news? Well, speaking late last week to The Washington Post, CIA Director Michael Hayden highlighted the steady and deliberate progress made against al-Qaida not only in Iraq and the rest of the Middle East, but also "globally." And without a doubt, the terror organization repeatedly overplayed its hand in Iraq, to the point that Sunni tribal chieftains, at long last sickened by the brutality, threw in their lot with coalition forces, particularly in Anbar province.

But let us never understate the coordinated effect the U.S. troop "surge," in Afghanistan as well as in Iraq, had in diminishing al-Qaida's effectiveness. Couple these offensives with the technological ability — yes, those wiretaps! —- to glean intelligence and monitor al-Qaida's shadowy operations, and reasons aplenty present themselves for why Gen. Hayden could speak as frankly and as optimistically as he did.

Focusing on Iraq itself, where earlier this week U.S. forces nabbed two key al-Qaida operatives in Mosul (one of the terror group's last urban strongholds), even terrorist kingpin Ayman al Zawahiri contended yet again that the country remains "the most important arena" in what President Bush calls the "long war."

This war is not yet won, but it is being waged in the right place, on battlegrounds of our choosing. That said, would Mr. Obama, for the sake of rhetorical consistency, continue to call for a withdrawal, thereby giving al-Qaida new life — and a victory — in a battle it seems to be losing?