The oft-cited “success” in al-Anbar has had nothing to do with the surge, but the handiwork of Sheikh Abdul Sattar from Ramadi, as I have blogged in the past. Unfortunately, he was killed today right in front of his house in Ramadi today by an IED, as BBC reports here:

Abdul Sattar Abu Risha, 37, led what was known as the “Anbar Awakening”, an alliance of Sunni Arab tribes that rose up against al-Qaeda in Iraq.

US President George Bush met and endorsed the sheikh last week in Iraq.

The White House, which has held up the movement in Anbar province as an example for the rest of Iraq, condemned his assassination as “an outrage”.

Later, President Bush is expected to announce that the US may pull some 30,000 US troops out of Iraq by the middle of next year – a move made possible partly by the progress in pacifying Anbar.

Abu Risha’s assassination will be a severe blow to the “Awakening” in Anbar, says the BBC’s Hugh Sykes in Baghdad.

Abu Risha was killed, along with two bodyguards, by a roadside bomb planted near his home in Ramadi, the capital of Iraq’s western Anbar province.

“The sheikh’s car was totally destroyed by the explosion,” Ramadi police officer Ahmed Mahmoud al-Alwani told Reuters.

Things are about to get much worse in Iraq, if you believe that’s even possible. I imagine that the President is scrambling to re-write his speech tonight, where he presumably planned to cite the “success” in al-Anbar — “success” that was totally due to the now-deceased Sattar.