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."[101] 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.