Here’s a very encouraging story from the Washington Post: Iraqis Cite Shift in Attitudes Since Vote. (Hat tip: Dirk Diggler.)

BAGHDAD, Feb. 6 — With a hero who gave his life for the elections, a revived national anthem blaring from car stereos and a greater willingness to help police, the public mood appears to be moving more clearly against the insurgency in Iraq, political and security officials said.

In the week since national elections, police officers and Iraqi National Guardsmen said they have received more tips from the public, resulting in more arrests and greater effectiveness in their efforts to weaken the violent insurgency rocking the country.

None of the officials said they believed the violence was over. An attack Sunday on a police station in Mahawil, 50 miles south of Baghdad, left 22 policemen and National Guardsmen and 14 attackers dead, the Associated Press reported. The incident was a bloody end to a day in which at least nine other Iraqis were reported slain, and a U.S. soldier was killed and two others were wounded north of the capital. Four Egyptian engineers were kidnapped and two insurgent groups issued statements threatening to kill an Italian journalist who was taken hostage on Friday.

But officials in Baghdad said a relative lull in violence in the capital has fueled the sense that something has fundamentally changed since the vote. A change of attitudes in Baghdad could make a crucial difference in the battle against the insurgency, and a buoyed sense of civic pride is already beginning to change the way the public treats the police, authorities say.

“They saw what we did for them in the election by providing safety, and now they understand this is their army and their sons,” said Sgt. Haider Abudl Heidi, a National Guardsman wearing a flak jacket at a checkpoint in Baghdad.

No “insurgency” can survive without at least some support in the general populace. If the mood really is turning against them, the mujahideen are on their way out.