There is no movement toward getting Syria and Iran’s help is calming down Iraq. I know many of you scoff at the idea of Iran helping but you have to remember without their help at Bonn, Karzai and Aftganistan would be in even worse shape. The small unit reconstruction teams that were suppossed to fan out into the Provinces has been put on hold since neither State or Defense has the resouces willing to do it.

Even though the Catholic Church is doing away with the concept of Limbo, they should keep it around to describe the state of Iraq today. Bush thinks that the Surge was a major strategic change. It wasn’t, it was a small scale change in tactics. Something really MAJOR is going to have to be done or Iraq will wallow in this violent cesspool for decades. We have to win militarily in order to effect the social, political and economic changes needed for Iraq to become a functioning state. Unfortunately, we cannot win militarily with 180,000 troops – not this year – not in 10 years. Short of a draft and a massive infusion of troops (500,000 +) we simply cannot squelch the insurrection. We have pissed off enough of the World so no one is going to come to our rescue with their own troops. Whether logical or not, they are going to let Bush stew in his own shit.

The answer is to call it – game, set, match and get off the court. We can call it a strategic retreat to prepare ourselves to do better next time at the next match.