Starting first with good news from Wake Up America who points to polls indicating an increased support for the war in Iraq from Americans, rising to 42% up from 35% in May, 2007. Says WUP:

Every day now, we are getting good news coming from Iraq, one success at a time, and the American people are beginning to understand that Harry “Baghdad” Reid was wrong, we have NOT lost Iraq and we WILL NOT lose in Iraq.

The bad news stories still are coming out, as they should, but for the first time in YEARS, it is being balanced now, by a reluctant media by the good news that they can no longer ignore and sweep under the rug.

Alot of credit for that needs to go to some of the fine independent journalists that have risked their lives to embed with our troops and bring us the truth.

People like Michael Yon, Bill Roggio just to name two, and the Miliblogs that speak to us from the frontline, but there are many more and they have my and many others THANKS for doing it.

As we head towards September conditions on the ground will hopefully cause that number to continue to trend higher. The other element which I think is behind the rise in numbers is the recognition that Al Qaeda is in Iraq, and the primary enemy, a fact which had been ignored by the traditional media for some time. Which leads me to the second front on which we are seeing some good news. From Front Page (H/T Jihad Watch):

A new Newsweek Poll on American attitudes toward Muslims and Islam has found that 46 percent of Americans believe that the United States is taking in too many Muslim immigrants. 32 percent think that Muslims in America are less loyal to the United States than they are to Islam. 28 percent believe that the Qur’an condones violence, and 41 percent hold that Islamic culture “glorifies suicide.” 54 percent are either “somewhat worried” or “very worried” about Islamic jihadists in this country, and 52 percent support FBI surveillance of mosques, with the same percentage rejecting the claim of American Muslim advocacy groups that Muslims are being singled out by investigators and police.

Of course as Robert Spencer points out, we’ll soon see a CAIR & Co. backlash against the backlash, with still more cries of “Islamophobia” and claims of bigotry, and most people are still failing to make the connection between violence and its koranic justification:

The prevailing view is that the Islamic Faith of today’s terrorists has nothing to do with their actions, and those who suspected otherwise are simply bigots who are drawing an unwarranted connection between Islam and terrorism. But it is some Muslims who are themselves making that connection, as the recent Pew Research Center poll of Muslims in America revealed: twenty-six percent of Muslims between the ages of eighteen and twenty-nine affirmed that there could be justification in some (unspecified) circumstances for suicide bombing, and five percent of all the Muslims surveyed said that they had a favorable view of Al-Qaeda. Given the Pew Center’s estimate of 2.35 million Muslims in America, and the total of thirteen percent that avowed a belief that suicide bombings could ever be justified, that’s over 300,000 supporters of suicide attacks. And 117,500 supporters of Al-Qaeda.

Nevertheless the poll shows us where our strong points will be in reaching out to the majority of Americans, and where we still need work. Given the numbers, it seems likely that most Americans can be persuaded to support efforts to survey and gather information on American mosques as Mapping Shari’a does (since 52 percent support survelliance of mosques) and many will be supportive of projects to like Refugee Resettlement Watch, which is working to track federal resettlement of Refugees (particulary Muslim refugees) often without the knowledge of local elected officials or community members (46 percent saying the US takes too many Muslim immigrants). Of course it also shows where work is still needed especially regarding koranic education.