Gary Kamiya is absolutely correct in his assessment of the situation. But this article is as pointless as all the others advising what G.W. Bush needs to do, about Iraq and everything else.

Bush is not his own man; the proof of that is in Dumbsfeld still being around instead of canned as soon as the debacle in Iraq became evident. According to Woodward's book, Bush was on the verge of finally firing him after the 2004 election but Cheney vetoed it. And also according to Woodward, Cheney's reason was that if Dumbsfeld were canned, he, Cheney, would be next.

Cheney can't be fired, of course, but he can and should be neutered, confined to attending state funerals and other ceremonial affairs. But he remains as the most powerful vice-president ever, because the figurehead president is helpless without him.

And there's not a chance in the world of changing Cheney’s mindset. He's still, with his old buddies Dumbsfeld and Kissinger, trying to save his legacy in the time remaining by proving that they right about Vietnam.

Even if Bush were able to remove Cheney from effective power, what then? Bush would still be incapable of acting on his own, and would require another hopefully more competent person to tell him what to do. (A far worse choice than Baker himself could be made.)

But as Baker himself keeps stressing, there is no guarantee that his commission's plan, or any plan, will succeed. Whatever is done now may be far too little and far too late.

All we know is that "staying the course" is a recipe for continued worsening disaster. If Gen. Shinseki and other qualified military experts were right when they claimed that the Iraqi invasion force should have been at least doubled, how can we hope to improve things now with about the original number after going on four years of everything getting progressively worse, and with Iraq already in a brutal civil war?

But would doubling the number of troops now, or increasing them by any amount, make things better? or worse? We had over 550,000 military personnel in Vietnam at one time, and all they succeeded in doing was killing themselves and Vietnamese.

And even if more troops now would help, where would they come from? The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have stretched have stretched our all volunteer military, and decimated its equipment, to meet other potential threats, threats certain to materialize as potential adversaries sense our weakness. Would any politician have the stones to propose and vote for the necessary draft and whole scale remobilization, let alone the increased taxes to pay for it?

Those who say that horrible things will happen in Iraq if our forces are pulled out are absolutely correct. The same argument was made for keeping them in Vietnam, and sure enough the horrible things -- a blood bath in Vietnam against those who had helped us there, the genocidal Pol Pot regime in Cambodia and other horrors -- did happen when we finally ended that war. But our continuing to stay there only prolonged those horrors, and made them much worse when they finally occurred.

Horrible things are already happening in Iraq, and they are getting more and more horrible, with our troops still there. Keeping them there may -- may – ameliorate the horror temporarily. It may also subject our own forces to that horror, as they are caught in the middle of a genocidal civil war whose only end can be a secular or theocratic dictatorship fully as bad as under Saddam Hussein; it could be far worse, at least as far as our own vital national interests are concerned.

That’s what comes of starting wars without thinking the potential consequences through.

By all means listen to what the Baker Commission says. But keep in mind what Baker himself has been saying in countless TV interviews: their ideas, or any one else’s, may not work; "Victory" is not a possibility, and the situation may indeed be hopeless.

Santorum says: "I don't think anyone would ask that question in 1944, 'Gee, how long are we going to be in Europe?' We're going to be in Europe until we win."

Among the many huge differences between the war in Iraq and WW II is that in WW II, after some initial setbacks the tide turned for the Allies and stayed that way until they achieved total victory; there was never any doubt as to the final outcome. The war in Iraq was the exact opposite: initial success up to Mission Accomplished Day (MAD?), then everything going downhill and with no indications of eventual improvement.

Methinks the Goopers should be careful about comparing the Iraq debable with WW II. A far more accurate analogy would be to the Axis powers of WW II, who also achieved major successes in the beginning but eventually suffered one defeat after the other until their countries were totally destroyed, all the while exhorting their people to stay the course.