There won’t be an official report on the effectiveness of the U.S. military surge in Iraq until September, but sometimes-conflicting reports are already coming daily on operations occurring in and around Baghdad. How will we know whether or not the surge is working?

One obvious answer is that we won’t know whether the surge is working until operations have actually been conducted. That is not so obvious to all, though. On June 13, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi told President Bush that his surge policy was a failure.

Reid and Pelosi said in a letter to Bush that “as many had foreseen, the escalation has failed to produce the intended results.” The letter was sent before all of the additional troops participating in the surge were in place in the region.

The Examiner’s blogger Bill Roggio described the biggest of the surge-related operations — Operation Phantom Thunder — as “a corps-level operation, with multiple U.S. and Iraqi divisions engaged on multiple fronts.”

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Roggio added that Iraqi security forces and Multinational Forces Iraq are “engaged in intense fights in four main theaters: Baghdad proper, and the belts regions consisting of Diyala and southern Salahadin provinces to the north, northern Babil province to the south, and eastern Anbar province to the west of Baghdad” with fighting being the most intense in the city of Baqouba, the provincial capital of Diyala.

The goal is to improve security in Iraq to the point that it can be maintained by Iraqi police and military, which would then allow U.S. troops to leave the region without the return of violence. To achieve that goal, military operations are being conducted to capture or kill those responsible for the violence in Iraq and to find and destroy their bomb-making capability and weapons caches.

The terrorists in Iraq and other parts of the Middle East have learned that many in the media measure success or failure by whether or not there are high profile attacks — bombs detonating. As operations intensify, it is likely that bombs will continue to blow up and casualties will continue to mount, even if (probably especially if) major progress is being made.

In the past, the media has reported U.S. military casualties, but less frequently reported the casualties of Iraqi insurgents and al Qaeda operatives. Recently, however, the number of insurgents and al Qaeda killed and wounded is being cited in new reports.

On June 22, Roggio reported that following Operation Phantom Thunder’s seventh day, ground forces commander Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno said in a media briefing that “coalition and Iraqi forces have killed 159 al Qaeda fighters and other insurgents, wounded 41, and detained 721 suspects. Coalition and Iraqi forces found and destroyed 304 roadside bombs, seven car bombs and 128 weapons caches.”

Other signs of progress in Iraq can be seen in the models of the Anbar Salvation Council and the Diyala Salvation Front in which tribes in Iraq have recently begun to band together to fight al Qaeda. This was seen by many as a turning point, coinciding with the increased surge operations, to provide intelligence aiding in the capture of those terrorizing the region.

In past operations, insurgents were flushed out of one area, only to regroup elsewhere. Now areas are being cordoned off, with access points being heavily controlled so that all those targeted are captured or killed.

Independent war reporter Michael Yon who described the operation as “surrender or die” reported on Baqouba: “Our guys are winning. Al Qaeda is about to be strangled and pummeled to death in this town, but the local Iraqi leadership is severely wanting.”

Success in Iraq is something that will depend not only on police and military forces to improve the security situation on the ground, but in the new leaders and institutions rising up to replace the Saddam Hussein regime being stable enough to maintain order.

Even if the military surge is successful in accomplishing its goals, an accurate determination of whether or not the overall mission in Iraq is deemed a success is likely to be written by historians in the future, rather than reporters of today.

We can know through some of the excellent reporting coming from Iraq, however, what progress is being made toward the ultimate goal of a stable and free Iraq.

Lorie Byrd is a member of The Examiner’s Blog Board of Contributors and blogs at Wizbangblog.com.