the progress in Anbar was happening before the surge

No it wasn’t. According to Gen. Petraeus’ testimony, US Marines were needed to kill off enough AQI terrorists before the sheikhs were willing to turn on AQI.

The sheikhs had wanted to turn but they didn’t until they stood a fighting chance.

Sen. Dorgan may not be far off

Sen. Dorgan is off by a country mile. He’s a $hit-for-brains idiot on foreign policy.

I cannot support a failed foreign policy. History teaches us that it is often easier to make war than peace. This administration is just learning that lesson right now. The President began this mission with very vague
objectives and lots of unanswered questions. A month later, these questions are still unanswered. There are no clarified rules of engagement. There is no timetable. There is no legitimate definition of victory. There is no contingency plan for mission creep. There is no clear funding program. There is no agenda to bolster our over-extended military. There is no explanation defining what vital national interests are at stake. There was no strategic plan for war when the President started this thing, and there still is no plan today.

Get ready for it…

Tom Delay

Rep. Jim Oberstar, D-Minn., said the public wants a change in Iraq and Congress has attempted to alter the Iraq strategy, but both have fallen on “deaf ears.”

Here’s what has fallen on deaf ears:

“If you had to choose, who do you think is most likely to make the right decisions about the war in Iraq: the Bush Administration, Congress, or U.S. military commanders in Iraq?

9/4-8/07
Administration: 5%
Congress: 21%
Military Commanders: 68%
None: 3%
Unsure: 3%”

See, Americans don’t WANT Congress “to alter the Iraq strategy.” They want the Military to call the shots.

http://www.pollingreport.com/iraq.htm

Richard Haas, a former senior State Department official, in comments published this week by the Council on Foreign Relations said he could imagine “an American presence of say 75,000 troops for years, if the costs were not high.”

“Again, I think the bottom line is that the administration has probably bought itself sixteen more months of something that looks a lot like the status quo.”

Bush himself said that he was just trying to get the situation in Iraq to a place where he could coerce the republican candidate for president into accepting the responsibility for the war (despite that fact that the likelihood of the next president being a republican is shrinking on a daily basis).

Meanwhile, the insurgents are pissed off that the Shiites in Anbar were siding with the Americans and allowing our ’surge’ to come into the province and Bush claim credit for making it less violent. Yes, that’s right: the progress in Anbar was happening before the surge:

In truth, the progress in Anbar was initiated by the Iraqis themselves, a point Gates himself made, saying the Sunni tribes decided to fight and retake control from al-Qaida many months before Bush decided to send an extra 4,000 Marines to Anbar as part of his troop buildup.

So, now we have a dead Abdul-Sattar Abu Risha thanks, in large part, to Bush interjecting himself into what little progress made, despite the increased troop levels.

On the other side of the country, Moqtada al-Sadr, smart enough to gauge what his enemies are doing, put a hold on his private army’s activities for six months… coincidentally, the length of time before we are forced to withdraw troops due to a stretched — and stressed — military. I was thrilled when Bush took credit for this, too, so that he will get the blame for what happens when al-Sadr reactivates his fighters (especially now that al-Sadr has withdrawn from al-Maliki’s government).

So, in the end, Sen. Dorgan may not be far off, as this administration cabal treats everything like a PR campaign (to whit, the constant flow of press releases from the WH this week). Our troops bought the Iraqi so-called government their “breathing room” and what progress was made ? We paid for the past ninth months with 798 American lives and $billions in treasure, the Iraqis went on vacation for a month, and our ally, so close the presnit stopped by for tea, was assassinated.

So how, exactly, is this not a worse position than we were in nine months ago, and how is what we’re going to do next not exactly like what we’ve already done?

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.–Albert Einstein