Friedman on NBC just said, "The surge is not working from what he can see".

Defining working as, "Iraqi factions talking to work things out".

Of course he left the door open, "They may be talking behind closed doors".

Maybe the group is getting even smaller.

I hate the 'what if it works' question.

Given no-one has given a satisfactory accounting of the objectives this 'surge' is supposed to accomplish? Exactly how is the introduction of a couple more brigades of troops - all of uncertain quality, training, equipment, and organization - supposed to accomplish anything in this mess?

But then, look who came up with it in the first place, eh?

a while back? Was this not evidence of a Presidential Capitulation to, well, reality? A recognition, perhaps, that the occupant of the office is incompetent to exercise good judgement, to BE the Commander in Chief he is forever prattling about, and to whom Americans owe fealty? And yet no General will accept the Honor of becoming War Tsar, to organize and execute further military conquest and pacification in our satrapies of Mesopotamia and Afghanistan.

Or was this War Tsar notion just another in a long line of feints, "See, we're doing something different now, and this is gonna work, really!" This time, everything's gonna come out OK. Just give them a little more time. And then a little more. Then more. And still more.

Americans -- even apparently the Generals -- have figured out that this is all a con-game, and they don't want any more of it. If I'm reading the signs and portents correctly, the Generals are saying, "No, Sir." They refuse to attack Iran on the orders of the White House (which could easily be Rogue Cheney for all we know). Their pacification efforts are failing badly, and the Natives are more restless than ever. The troops are understandably frustrated and angry and are lashing out at the Natives more and more. Which ensures the continued spiral into utter Chaos.

Getting out is seen as the reasonable option now, because everything else is simply atrocious. The neo-cons run around screaming, "It'll be a bloodbath!!!" as yet more market-goers are blown to bits, civilian districts leveled by air power, and ethnic cleansing and genocide continue unabated. It is not a bloodbath now? Somehow these deadenders don't think it is. No. No, all is Sweetness, all is Light. St. McCain can be driven on the Airport Road. Now THAT'S progress. We are WINNING!

Americans aren't buying it any more.

But it seems to me, by floating the "War Tsar" notion, the White House (even Raging Bull Cheney?) has given up.

Victory through retreat.

I detest the Iraq war as much as anyone, but I think it's unrealistic to believe that one election, wherein the Democrats attained only a small majority, is going to fundamentally change the dynamics in Washington. I hear many of my fellow liberal/leftists constantly repeating the idea that "the public spoke in 2006" as if that were the only vote that actually counted. But didn't the public speak in 2002 and 2004 as well, and didn't they essentially vote for war? And isn't two-thirds of the Senate still represented by those elections?

Despite the failures of the media and the mendacity of the Bush administration, there were plenty of reasons for skepticism on Iraq back then for people willing to think. People voted for war out of fear, ignorance and xenophobia.

Individual elections can be the beginning of a trend (1932) or they can be an aberration (1976); it's difficult to argue that a single off-year election is anything but a point-in-time reflection of the public's mood.

Will the public still be soured on Iraq next year? I'm betting yes, but only time will tell. Even without the entrenched special interests that Glenn describes so thoughtfully, the U.S. government contains a number of constraints against reacting too strongly or too immediately to popular will.

"Democratic freshman Rep. John Yarmuth (D-Ky.) represents the kind of swing district that swung Congress to the Democrats in November -- and the kind of district that would be watching Pelosi and her crew closely to see if they went too far left too fast.

During a recent trip home to hear what was on his constituents' minds, Yarmuth heard about Iraq everywhere he went -- and the calls were almost uniformly for withdrawal, without patience for nuances like the nitty-gritty of Congress' constitutional powers. On Iraq, he sensed his constituents were actually more extreme in their views than either he or the House Democratic leadership was."

I watched John Yarmuth's "Damn right I am a Liberal and Proud of it!" campaign with joy. He beat a five-term incumbent wingnut with room to spare. I am thrilled but not remotely surprised that he is the first of his colleagues to notice that even as a liberal he's way to the right of his red state constituents on Iraq.

Listen up, congressional dems: If you voted today to withdraw every last American from Iraq immediately, impeach bush and cheney, reverse every single act of this maladministration from the last six years, and burn K street to the ground and salt the ground, you'd still be way behind where Americans already are.

Its clear now the poor boy is suffering auditory hallucinations. Probably thinks his opinion is of any import, too.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18094428/

MR. RUSSERT: The Democrats have proposed legislation which would set benchmarks or guidelines for the Iraqis to meet in terms of stepping up, but also a firm date for the withdrawal of U.S. troops. Is that wise?

GEN. ZINNI: No. I mean, you know, people that talk about benchmarks and withdrawals, what are we going to do, disband Centcom? You know, this was created in the, in the early ‘70s when we assumed most of the foundation for the security in this region. Centcom was created by President Carter because of our interests in this region—economic, political, security interests. They haven’t changed. If anything else, at the end of the Cold War, they were actually, I think, heightened in many respects.

We’re going to be in this part of the world. We aren’t going to leave. Now, we can readjust our strategy for Iraq. We can extricate our troops from the sectarian violence. But we’re going to have to contain the problems that could spill over and the—and cause this critical part of the world to spin out of control.

We need to rethink that kind of strategy, that kind of positioning. But more importantly, we need to rethink our relationships in that region. We have to build a collective security arrangement, a coalition arrangement to replace the one we destroyed by going into Iraq now. The, the Gulf coalition was fragile, it supported our containment of Iran and Iraq before. Most of the leaders in this region that I talk to are asking me, “What’s the new arrangement?” They are at least thinking past Iraq. They’re thinking in strategic terms, and no one’s engaging them on that level of, of discussion. There should be more in the way of burden sharing, more in the way of cooperative defense, more in the way of security assistance programs that help build the kind of region that can take care of itself with our help and with our involvement. There’s no way out of that.