As if the Pentagon does not get enough bad news from Iraq, there was gloom on the home front last week as US army drill sergeants complained that they were being turned into “baby-sitters” for fear of putting off new recruits.

The foul-mouthed tyrants of military boot camp legend are no longer permitted to address their charges as “maggot” or “worm”. In a desperate bid to lower the fall-out rate among the dwindling numbers of young Americans ready to sign up, the Pentagon is turning to sergeants who motivate by “calm authority” instead of deriding novices.

All this has proved too much for a number of veteran instructors, one of whom told a radio reporter last week that “if you can’t handle a little bit of stress from a drill sergeant, you sure can’t handle a bunch of stress from reality in Iraq”.

Yet not even the bellowing of irate instructors could drown out a very different row over that Iraqi reality last week.

Despite everything the world knows about how badly the war in Iraq is going, how hopeless the military outlook remains and how urgently everyone should pack up and go home, the debate in America unexpectedly shifted to a radically different perspective: are things actually going better than we think ?

When Bill Kristol, the prominent neoconservative, suggested last month that President George W Bush might yet triumph in Iraq, he was greeted with abuse.

Arianna Huffington, the former socialite turned antiwar blogger, called Kristol’s Washington Post article “the single most deceptive piece of the entire war”. Others derided Kristol as a “partisan fool” and a “Bush sycophant”. The message from the liberal establishment was clear: a US defeat in Iraq is inevitable and woe betide anyone who stands in the way of an urgent troop withdrawal.

Yet uncomfortable developments last week have forced a modest reassessment of Bush’s supposed disaster-in-progress.

At just the moment when Gordon Brown, the prime minister, appeared to be carefully distancing himself from Washington, there was news from the front that was not entirely calamitous. It was easy to dismiss as a statistical blip the latest casualty figures from the Pentagon - it said that 74 US soldiers had died in Iraq in July, down from a monthly average of more than 100 for much of this year and the lowest level for eight months.

It was initially thought to be a polling anomaly that had accounted for an unexpected rise in the number of Americans who believe that Bush did the right thing when he invaded Iraq.

The New York Times poll showed that 42% now believe the war is justified, up from 35% in May. The paper was so surprised by the results that it repeated the poll to be sure there had not been a mistake.

There was also mildly encouraging news in a record capture of insurgent weapons, a significant decrease in Shi’ite death squad activity and what General David Petraeus, the US commander in Iraq, described as “a reasonable degree of tactical momentum on the ground”.

The most controversial development was another newspaper article with the headline “A war we just might win”. Its academic authors, Michael O’Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack, are still recovering from the onslaught their optimism provoked.

Both resident scholars at the Brookings Institution in Washington, O’Hanlon and Pollack returned from an eight-day visit to Iraq to complain that the Bush administration’s critics “seem unaware of the significant changes taking place”.

The two men listed a series of encouraging security developments, from the increasing competence of Iraqi units to the Sunni sheikhs who have turned against Al-Qaeda and the success of the provincial reconstruction teams.

“We are finally getting somewhere in Iraq, at least in military terms,” they concluded. “As two analysts who have harshly criticised the Bush administration’s miserable handling of Iraq, we were surprised by the gains we saw and the potential to produce not necessarily ‘victory’, but a sustainable stability that both we and the Iraqis could live with.”

Uproar ensued as Pollack and O’Hanlon were accused by liberal bloggers of “selling out” to the neocons.

As internet forums seethed with scorn and ridicule, a crucial question went largely ignored. Has the conventional wisdom that Iraq is a disaster become so deeply ingrained that America might start pulling out just when it most needs to stay?

Dick Cheney, the vice-president, predicted last week that a key report to be presented by Petraeus in September would show “significant progress”. Yet few Americans pay much attention to Cheney these days and it was the hostile reaction to a more independent assessment of Iraq that was giving food for thought at the White House.

“What explains the fact that some critics of the war are unwilling to hear good news of any sort – and get visibly agitated and disdainful when we see signs of progress ?” asked Peter Wehner, a senior security aide to Bush.

Perhaps the White House should think of hiring some of those disgruntled drill sergeants – to whip its critics into line.

British pull-out talks

A British general will go to Iraq next month to liaise with the Americans over withdrawal of the bulk of British troops, writes Michael Smith. Brigadier Bruce Brealey, to be promoted to major-general for the role, will liaise with General David Petraeus, the US commander. His posting is effectively a confirmation that an announcement on a British withdrawal is imminent.

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