The biggest disappointment was the Maliki governement. While Americans agonize over what to do, the Iraqis just squabble among themselves.
I’m wondering what good are all our proposals and plans for solutions (like separation into semi-autonomous regions) if their government can’t make a move. We can’t topple this government and start over, so we’re stuck with a seemingly insoluble situation at the very heart of the Iraqis’ problems.

While the President gets all the mileage he can out of the AQ threat, the threat itself can’t be dismissed.
Their renewed concentration in Pakistan/Afghanistan does complicate the regional picture a great deal, as does the role Iraq plays as a recruiting poster for recruits.

I fret. I worry. What will Congress do? What will the President do? What SHOULD they do?

Hayden catalogued what he saw as the main sources of violence in this order: the insurgency, sectarian strife, criminality, general anarchy and, lastly, al-Qaeda. Though Hayden had listed al-Qaeda as the fifth most pressing threat in Iraq, Bush regularly lists al-Qaeda first.

A text search of the Whitehouse transcript of W’s presser yields 37 uses of al-Qaeda, 0 insurgents/insurgency and 4 instances of sectarian(violence). For years W has inflated the al-Qeda threat in Iraq over internal strife, it continues today. As his credibility approaches ZERO…