WASHINGTON — Here’s a quick round-up of interesting finds from the weekend papers in case the holiday cheer kept you away from the press.
The New York Times continues its series on Public Lands in the West with a look Sunday at the surge in off-roading. Here’s the link http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/30/us/30lands.html?_r=1=slogin and some early graphs from the story:

“From Colorado’s forests to Utah’s sandstone canyons and the evergreen mountains of Montana, federally owned lands are rapidly being transformed into the new playgrounds — and battlegrounds — of the American West.
Outdoor enthusiasts are flocking in record numbers to lesser-known forests, deserts and mountains, where the rules of use have been lax and enforcement infrequent.
The federal government has been struggling to come up with plans to accommodate the growing numbers of off-highway vehicles — mostly with proposed maps directing them toward designated trails — but all-terrain-vehicle users have started formidable lobbying campaigns when favorite trails have been left off the maps.
Even with the plans, federal officials describe an almost impossible enforcement situation because the government does not begin to have the manpower to deal with those who will not follow the rules.”

Also, as Nevada’s Democratic Rep. Shelley Berkley made her first trip to Iraq last week, we wrote about her changed view of President Bush’s troop surge after witnessing the improved security in Al Anbar Provence. Here were some other recent observations from the region:

The Washington Post had this short update on the decline in attacks during the second half of 2007 from a year-end press briefing with Gen. David Petraeus.

Here are the lead graphs:

“BAGHDAD, Dec. 29 — The top U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. David H. Petraeus, delivered a positive but cautious assessment Saturday of progress in the country in 2007, citing the drop-off in violence over the latter half of the year but warning that the insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq remains the country’s preeminent threat.
Petraeus said the number of weekly attacks in Iraq — such as roadside bombings, mortar attacks and sniper fire — has fallen by about 60 percent since June, to about 500 a week by late this month. The number of Iraqi civilians killed in December through the 22nd appeared to be about 600, according to a graph of the past two years provided by Petraeus that uses combined Iraqi and U.S. figures. The highest death toll during this period came last December, when about 3,000 civilians were killed.

“The positive security trends and the factors that produced them are changing the context in many parts of Iraq. While progress in many areas remains fragile, security has improved,” Petraeus said during a briefing for reporters at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad. He added that success “will emerge slowly and fitfully, with reverses as well as advances, accumulating fewer bad days and gradually more good days. There will inevitably be more tough fighting.”

And the NYT had this account Sunday from a reporter following a Marine captain working to rebuild Falluja, the city where he lost three colleagues earlier in the war:

“I was wounded in Falluja too, so walking down these streets — it’s not easy.”
“Reconciliation,” he said, eyeing some Iraqi policemen nearby. “It’s a hard pill to swallow.”
Since long before this war, forgiveness has been Iraq’s greatest challenge. What does it take for an abused, angry population to move on after so much suffering? Can they ever learn to trust one another?
In 2007, more than before, the same questions became central for Americans like Captain Miller. This was the deadliest year of the war for American troops. But it was also the year of a sudden shift in Sunni loyalties throughout Iraq, overnight turning enemies of America into allies against more extreme Islamists.
The Americans welcomed the turnabout, which has helped decrease violence throughout the country, but they were not prepared for it. It has been 25 years since another generation of marines failed to separate the sides in Lebanon’s civil war, and the Middle East, with its long history of about-faces and betrayals, where allegiances are shallow and enmities deep, often still defies American logic.”