Miklaszewski said the good news is tempered by "the fear that the insurgents are only regrouping for an offensive timed for the [Iraqi] elections" in January.

But terrorist leader Abu Musab al Zarqawi suggested last week that his forces were in no position to mount a counterattack - since the Fallujah offensive had devastated the insurgency.

"Hundreds of thousands of the nation's sons are being slaughtered at the hands of the infidels," Zarqawi said in an audiotape posted on an Islamic Web site known as al-Qala'a, which has been a mailbox for Islamic militant groups.

In an indictment of Muslim clerics, whom he blamed for failing to support the insurgency, the Jordanian-born terrorist complained, "Are your hearts not shaken by the scenes of your brothers being surrounded and hurt by your enemy?

"How long will you continue to abandon the nation to the tyrants of the east and of the west, who are inflicting the worst suffering, cutting the throats of the holy warriors ...?"

Like the news of the plummeting insurgent attacks, the media downplayed the Zarqawi tape.

The New York Times, for instance, covered the top terrorist's stunning admission of defeat on page A22 of its little-read Thanksgiving Day edition.

The Washington Post buried the bombshell news in a Thanksgiving Day report headlined "American Envoy Killed in Baghdad," where quotes from the Zarqawi tape weren't even mentioned until the 17th paragraph.

Editor's note: