Bush. The provincial powers law includes a provision for provincial elections, another key benchmark. And the budget should pave the way for the creation of up to 700,000 new jobs for Iraqis. USA Today stated on February 17, 2008, that US Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker "may be hard-pressed to argue that Iraqis have met political benchmarks Congress sought" and contrasted the political progress with the recent military progress. Interpretation of results Whether the surge led to the improvement in Iraqi security, or other factors caused it, is disputed by some. Council of Foreign Relations fellow Noah Feldman has remarked that: Support Both critics of the surge and independent news services have stated that the conventional wisdom in the United States media is that the surge 'worked'. Many Democratic political leaders have acknowledged the same. In June 2008, correspondents on Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer stated that "few would argue about the success of the so-called surge in Iraq". Time has stated that "the surge is a fragile and limited success, an operation that has helped stabilize the capital and its surroundings." The New York Times has stated that "The surge, clearly, has worked, at least for now. ... The result, now visible in the streets, is a calm unlike any the country has seen since the American invasion". Peter Mansoor, General Petraeus's executive officer and author of the Baghdad at Sunrise: A Brigade Commander's War in Iraq, stated in an August 2008 The Washington Post op-ed that "The Iraq war is not over, but our war effort is on a firmer foundation... The surge has created the space and time for the competition for power and resources in Iraq to play out in the political realm, with words instead of bombs." Blogger and independent reporter Michael Yon, who has been embedded with the troops in Iraq for years, had suggested the surge strategy before it was formalized. In his book, Moment of Truth in Iraq, Yon argued that Petraeus had turned defeat into victory in Iraq and that the surge had succeeded. In July 2008, Yon stated in a New York Daily News editorial that "'The war in Iraq is over ... the Iraqi people won." Historian Larry Schweikart argued in his book America's Victories: Why the U.S. Wins Wars, that the surge's success, in part, came from the incredible casualties the US military inflicted on al-Qaeda in Iraq