It should go without saying that John McCain is leaning very, very heavily on Iraq, and particularly the effectiveness of the surge, in order to make his case that he would be a superior Commander-in-Chief to Barack Obama. In case you haven't been following the most recent round of sniping between Obama and McCain, it goes roughly like this:

McCAIN. First there was the surge, then there was stability. Surge good!
OBAMA. Right, but the stated purpose of the surge was to make space for a political reconciliation, which didn't happen. Surge bad!
McCAIN. But other awesome stuff happened after the surge too, like the Anbar Awakening. Surge good!

(See, I told you it would be rough.)

Then, unfortunately, the facts got in the way. It seems that the Anbar Awakening (or Sunni Awakening, or Iraqi Awakening; whichever term you prefer, it refers to the establishment of a number of councils of Sunnis who cooperated with the American military against Sunni insurgents) actually happened before the surge. TPM strings it all together:

As McCain might say: "I mean, that's just a matter of history."