An interesting article from the AP Military Writer, Robert Burns. Here's the link Analysis: Only Iraqis can win the war. A couple of excerpts below - but how about this for the opening sentence:
The harder President Bush has pushed to win in Iraq, the closer he has come to losing.
Burns goes on to state flat out:
The question no longer is whether the U.S. military can fully stabilize Iraq. It cannot.
After noting that opportunity was lost when we didn't have the troops to control the country in the beginning, and that the current hope (note to all "Hope is NOT a Plan") is that somewhat the Iraqis will step up to the task, Burns noted that Bush's sky continued to be of a color that no one else can see, as he
remains notably optimistic ... about his straegy and (gives) no indication that he was ready to give up or change approach.
After asking several questions about what other countries might do, and whether or not Al Qaida would be able to turn the whole region into an even worse nightmare, we are given the humor quote of the article: According to Frederisk Kagan (he of the lecturing of General Baptiste)
an American Enterprise Institute analyst who recently visited Baghdad and is a leading supporter of the current strategy, the truly decisive phase of the current campaign will begin in late July or early August (approximately one sixth to one fifth of an FU). He predicts that phase will bring much lower levels of violence by year's end (a full FU from now)
Burns noted, however,
The trends so far, however, are not encouraging and the political tides are not favorable either
After further discussions of the dangers to our troops and the lack of public support, Burns concluded by talking about the Korea-fication of Iraq as the Bushites "Plan B."
Burns, for one, did not seem impressed with the Bush vision...