it’s well past time to scale this fiasco back - special forces are the only troops we should be using in the war on terror. And they should be hunting terrorists, not policing Bagdad.

let the Iraqi people take responsibility for their future

Is the violence shifting from one province to another really a change, let alone one which would qualify as a transformation? Hardly. Kathleen Hicks of the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies: “The bigger question is whether any kind of security progress at the pace we’re likely to see is going to translate into a political settlement,” Hicks said. “I think the answer is no.” And since the purpose of the so-called “surge” is to allow the Iraqis to get their act in gear, this does not bode well, as the article points out. “Pace’s comment ’strains your credibility,’ especially on a day when a National Intelligence Estimate predicted that al-Qaida would likely ‘leverage’ its contacts in Iraq to mount an attack on American soil,” says Bruce Riedel of the Brookings Institution.

Even the presnit himself said that the Iraqis have made little progress on the oh-so-minimal and unbinding benchmarks, with his own administration cabal giving themselves a grade that amounts to “a gentleman’s ‘F’” as Jon Stewart puts it, with progress in only 8 of 18 areas.

Meanwhile, the Iraqis continue to suffer under our occupation:

In Baghdad, Tuesday’s deadliest car bombing occurred when a suicide driver detonated his vehicle near an Iraqi army patrol in Zayouna, a mostly Shiite area of eastern Baghdad. The attack killed 10 people, including six civilians, and wounded three civilians, police said.

Elsewhere in the capital, a car bomb exploded across the street from the Iranian Embassy, killing four civilians. The late morning blast took place a few hundred yards north of the U.S.-controlled Green Zone and sent a huge cloud of black smoke over the city.
…
In the northern city of Mosul, nine people were killed when a suicide car bomber attacked the entrance to an Iraqi army base, police Brig. Gen. Abdul Karim al-Jubouri said. All but one of the dead were civilians.

in Diyala, police Col. Ragheb Radhi al-Omairi said 29 members of a Shiite tribe were massacred overnight when dozens of suspected Sunni gunmen raided their village near Muqdadiyah, about 20 miles northeast of Baqouba. The dead included four women.

A suicide bomber in the volatile northern city of Kirkuk on Monday crashed his truck into a compound that includes offices of a major Kurdish political party, killing 85 people. Many victims were women and children, shopping in the busy market next to the political offices, who were engulfed by a large fireball.

I’m sure you’re all set to pounce on Lee Hamilton, who has been practically a lone voice on the reality in Iraq, saying “The president gave them a satisfactory rating. But all they’ve done is create a committee” to work on a host of legislative issues aimed at completing the transition from the Saddam Hussein era. “I am extremely doubtful about it. He’s had quite a bit of time now. He’s known exactly what he’s had to do. He hasn’t done it. His rhetoric is pretty good. His performance is pretty bad.”

So, if by “sea change” you mean more of the same, yeah, I guess it’s a sea change. Otherwise, it’s still pretty dismal.
Even BillO, the bulwark of spin, thinks it’s lost. Please send him a copy of this article. I’m sure he’ll come around.