Imagine Fox News doing a story last year during the spiraling sectarian warfare entitled, “For Iraqi bodybag manufacturers, business is booming!” Okay, now imagine the opposite of that. Here you go. Courtesy of McClatchy, the dark lining in a brightening cloud:

A drop in violence around Iraq has cut burials in the huge Wadi al Salam cemetery here by at least one-third in the past six months, and that’s cut the pay of thousands of workers who make their living digging graves, washing corpses or selling burial shrouds…

Dhurgham Majed al Malik, 48, whose family has arranged burial services for generations, said that this spring, private cars and taxis with caskets lashed to their roofs arrived at a rate of 6,500 a month. Now it’s 4,000 or less, he said.

Truly, the morticians of Iraq have earned the right to call the man “Betray Us.” Meanwhile, for our military and/or embed readers, explain this to me. Diyala is still a “hot” area, is it not? Why start the surge drawdown there instead of in Anbar, where the locals are already shouldering more of the load?