I agree with the quoted statement, but I am not optimistic for the future. It’s great that the surge bought some residents of Baghdad a few weeks to have half of a state of calm, by which I mean suffering only Sunni attacks instead of both Sunni and Shiite attacks. But that’s not a military victory so much as a political agreement. And the problem of the Sunni insurgency – which is still doing damage and violence at a mostly steady, constant rate as far as I can tell – hasn’t been solved today and won’t be solved tomorrow.

Khalilzad said the talks have shifted from “unreasonable demands� by the groups for a US withdrawal to forming an alliance against al-Qaeda.

I wish I could believe this, but I don’t.

I just reread my original post, and see that I blamed both of them there too. I did not and do not support the war, but to start it and then bungle it so casually and arrogantly is unforgiveable. To keep a failed policy and policymaker in place because of loyalty is ludicrous when so much is at stake. It makes me wonder if Rumsfeld would still be Sec Def to this day if the Republicans had held onto Congress.

Blame Rumsfeld for stubbornly sticking with a terribly naive plan and trying to fight this on the cheap. Also blame Bush for sticking with Rumsfeld way too long out of misplaced loyalty or egotistic motives.

Actually, just cut out the middleman. Blame Bush. It was Bush’s decision to go to war in Iraq. It’s been his appointees who’ve run it. It was his administration that put political ideology over competence at every level of the reconstruction effort. It was Bush who waited month’s after Rumsfeld’s resignation to even put forward the surge plan. Bush signed off on all of it. Rumsfeld is just one of scores of officials who’ve bungled this effort.

Negotiations between non-AQI militants and the government (US or Iraqi) have been going on for about two years. The problem, again, is that they never amount to anything sustainable. Any sheikh who makes peace with the government gets blown up. And there are a lot of middling groups that aren’t technically AQI but are highly militant and Islamist, and they receive tons and tons of money from Gulf billionaires. They have no problem paying people to carry out attacks against both government forces and potential collaborators. The government just can’t sustain itself in the Sunni areas to establish legitimacy. AQI is a nuisance to average Sunnis, but the Shi’ites are the longterm enemy. Until that changes, Sunnis won’t turn en masse against AQI.

2) Al-Qaeda is a not the starter that one may think it is. A very small percentage of violence is actuallly from them per se, although it tends to be the spectacular type. We have had this very conversation with Sunni’s before and it got nowhere, hopefully this time will be different, but…

3) The underlying issues are simply not addressed. Example? From a Sunni perspective, the oil law sucks, even if its passed (they oppose it currently). All it says is that the revenue will be shared, but not how. Now the part about what companies’ whom invest get is all spelled out. Go figure eh?

In general we are treading water for now. But, that is indeed way better than sinking like a stone as we had been doing.

The problem comes with dealing with the spread of violence outside of Anbar/Baghdad area. And, of course, on getting actual progress on reconcilliation between the various power blocks to progress.

I also heard that as the number of bombings in Baghdad decrease, they increase in smaller towns outside of Baghdad, where 2 mosques were attacked in a single day.

In the back of all this daily assessment lies the bigger question of what al Sadr will do when the surge is over.

For me, the important news is what the Iraqi government is doing, and about that we hear little. At least the news about negotiations is good news.

Anyway…….. The problems with the surge are:

We cannot maintain the level needed to secure the peace for very long as our military is limited- al queda knows this and can just wait us out.

The political benchmarks of reconciliation, amnesty and oil revenue sharing have not been reached, which will lead the Sunnis to still mistrust this gov’t.

Violence is diminishing in Baghdad and Anbar province, but spreading in other parts of the country.

Economic conditions and basic living conditions are still dire, which feeds into the violence.

The American public has been patient for four years of an expensive war with no progress. They will not be patient enough to stick it out for an unknown number of years to give Petraeus a fair shot.

Blame Rumsfeld for stubbornly sticking with a terribly naive plan and trying to fight this on the cheap. Also blame Bush for sticking with Rumsfeld way too long out of misplaced loyalty or egotistic motives. The mistakes that were made early on in the war could have been caught and corrected, if those involved were interested in really winning, and not just snowing the American public.

As it stands now, we can only provide a temporary return of basic security to parts of Baghdad, in order to give Maliki’s regime a chance for national reunification