In a rare appearance in Washington, General George Casey offered an optimistic but cautious assessment of the situation in Iraq, where he commands more than 140,000 U.S. and coalition troops.

"We're actually a little further along than I thought we would be at this point"

The general said the Iraqi insurgency is still capable of launching devastating attacks, but he says it is weaker than it was a few months ago thanks to continuing offensive operations by his troops and the new Iraqi army and police.

"In general terms, they are falling off and not effective," he said. "We took a look at the election attacks, because we said, 'the elections ought to tell us something about the strength of the enemy.' Well, we saw about 300 attacks [and] maybe 70 percent of those were ineffective."
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