Oh come on. The "surge" hasn't "worked." In the first place, not that it's really on point, the reports of diminished violence in Iraq are greatly exaggerated. What has happened is that the media in the United States have simply stopped reporting on most of the violence which, in fact, continues to occur every day. Iraq Today gives the daily roundup from AFP, Aswat al Iraq (the very reliable independent Iraqi news service), DPA, Xinhua, Reuters and the AP among other sources, and 90% of it you will never read about in the U.S.

Second, the point wasn't principally to put the lid on the pressure cooker of violence. To the extent violence is reduced it's mostly because the sectarian cleansing process has been completed. Politically motivated violence -- attacks on police, army patrols, and public officials and officials buildings -- is going on largely unabated, although it has migrated out of Baghdad to a considerable extent so it's less visible to western reporters.

But the point was to achieve various political goals, none of which are anywhere in sight in spite of administration misrepresentations to the contrary. The U.S. has in fact armed Sunni militias who remain as opposed to the Shiite-led government as ever - and in fact there have been some skirmishes between the Sahwa councils and government police, again unreported in the U.S. The attempts by the collaborationist government to turn the oil resources over to American companies with no-bid contracts are, believe me, more than a tad unpopular, as is the proposed Status of Forces agreement, and if they go ahead and sign either one of these, there will be hell to pay. Not that either constitute worthy goals of U.S. policy anyway.

The breakup of Iraq is more probable now than ever. The question is how violent it will be. Really, for all practical purposes, it's already happened. BTW the Turkish-Kurdish Iranian-Kurdish border wars are simmering along, as is the Arab-Kurdish border war in Kirkuk. There is no progress toward resolving any of these three problems.

And, of course, the war of attrition against the occupation grinds on. The boys are still coming home in boxes and that is going to continue, yes, for 100 years, if McCain has his way and we end up staying. And what is the point of all this? There is none that I can discern, or that GW Bush or John McCain or Fixed News even tries to articulate, except that we can't allow ourselves to be "defeated," whatever that means.

Bush legitimized the surge by claiming he was following the ISG strategy, but then only took one of the recommendations.

And that's precisely the problem, the surge can only be considered a "success" if we ignore that the ISG described it as a means to eventual stability so that we could get out of Iraq. It's now being argued as a reason for staying, which doesn't make any sense at all.

Increased stability in Iraq as a result of the surge was supposed to facilitate a responsible withdrawal, not an indefinite semi-occupation!

I recomend this type of divorce with all my heart. It's simple, relatively fast and lest cumbersome than an full blown legal separation. Mediation is available in all US states and it can greatly improve your quality of life during a divorce process.

"In fact, when it comes to Iraq, Bush was at his worst when he was humbly deferring to the generals and at his best when he was arrogantly overruling them."

Like the generals who said he needed more than 150,000 troops to invade and hold Iraq?
Brooks is a waste of oxygen.

Obama had more coalition casualities in Afghanistan last month then Bush had in Iraq. And Obama has no plan to withdraw troops and reduce the violence.

Perhaps baby Alex will die in Obamas useless war in Afghanistan. Its time to bring the troopps home from Afghanistan Obama and that will cause the terrorists to go back to their falafel stands.

Obama doesn't have a plan to keep the Marines out of the White House fridge. America and the world need someone who can clean up the messes created by BushCo and do so with the least pain possible. McInsane probably isn't the right man for the job, but then there's no way Obamarama is any better. He's a twittering deer caught in the headlights of a tough world, even tougher than those part time faculty meetings at the U of C. An O-administration will be like the idiocy of Carter on steroids.

You can tell Obama knows what he's talking about and will quickly gain the respect of the military when he explains to them why Arabic interpreters are more important in Afghanistan then in Iraq. Since Osama taught all those Pakistanis Arabic as opposed to the native Pashto and Dari.