He's concerned that the options at his disposal aren't going do the trick, and what he's has achieved is going to slip away. Baghdad is under an unsustainable US troop pressure cooker, Basra is now even closer to civil war and the window for political progress is now fairly closed as Shia and Sunnis see no political substantive solutions attainable and are preparing for war.

So if I'm reading him correctly, Petraeus is basically just saying we have to stay in Iraq forever. Am I right? Because the second we pull out like one more soldier, the whole place goes to hell (er, a lower circle at least) in a handbasket. And since there's really no prospect of the Iraqi politicians ever being anything more than a motley bunch of dysfunctional kleptocrats and religious nuts looking for the slightest opening to start slaughtering each other, we're there forever.

Notice he didn't say we're winning. He says we're just stuck there until the Iraqis get their shit together. That'll happen any day now, I'm sure.

Some of the Iraqis actually ARE getting their shit together.

Just wanted to throw out the blog LT Nixon Rants at ltnixonrants.blogspot.com

He does a "Good, Bad, Ugly" feature from Iraq. I've learned a lot from it.

He also blogs at www.vetvoice.com

Now that Petraeus is saying it too, does that make it OK?

Yes.

This has been another edition....

So if I'm reading him correctly, Petraeus is basically just saying we have to stay in Iraq forever. Am I right?

Yes.

This has been another edition.....

Petraeus is saying quagmire!!

And its probably going to get worse when the Iraq government sends trops nto Basra [oil]

Speaking a bit more seriously, permanent occupation was the objective of the invasion.

In a Jeffrey Goldberg article in the Atlantic, he quotes Feith in 2002 as saying that instability is not necessarily a bad thing in Iraq. If the Iraqis were to put together a functional, even moderately representative government, the US would be booted out in no time.

There is no way that there is a broad consensus in Iraq that the country should serve as a staging platform for the United States' objectives of preserving,if not expanding, Israel's territory, and deposing Iran's government.

Meanwhile, the Iraqi refugee crisis grows. Four million people are now refugees or internally displaced by this humanitarian catastrophe. It galls me when people, even liberals, mindlessly regurgitate Bush’s false narrative that we can’t leave Iraq or it would create chaos. The truth is -- the U.S. occupation of Iraq already has created chaos and a humanitarian disaster of Biblical proportions. End the occupation NOW!!!

Might we get from historians visiting this Blog comparisons of the Iraqi "Awakening" with the several "Awakenings" here of a religious nature going back to colonial days? Is there a religious aspect to the one in Iraq? And if the "Awakening" fails, does it turn into a wake?

Well, someday we're going to run out of oil, and then the conservatives who were telling their voters to pay no mind to environmentalist liberals- so the conservatives could win elections- are going to have to admit that we really needed electric cars after all.

Somewhere along the line the conservatives may be the ones who are telling people to use reusable shopping bags at the grocery store, since the plastic ones are made from petroleum.

Why do the people keep falling for their shit?

They're waiting for an Obama or Clinton as President:.

1) wait for immediate troop withdrawal.

2) start a real civil war when the US is gone.

3) Then we win by letting the real Iraq go forward and we realize what a waste of time this war really was.

4) Then we can concentrate on tax increases for the rich and reinstall the family care programs denuded in 1996. And we can balance the budget.

Jim, Iraq is a meatgrinder and it's obvious those people there hate us. No amount of liberal anti-racism should delude us into thinking otherwise. Sure, there is a portion of the population that greets us as liberators.

But our own troops have said all along that they can't tell who the friend is and who the foe is. Our own troops have said that the ones who they train during the day are the ones fighting us at night. Our own troops know that the populations are gladdened by attacks on Americans and that we don't really get enough help from the people to top the terrorists. What help we do get probably has more to do with bribes than with accepting our hekp and presence.

If the Iraqis want to kill themselves in a civil war, that is up to them. They certainly have gone far enough to desrve what they get. Sure, there are a few people there who are good, but it is not up to us to get thousands of our guys killed, while trying to use a military that is inadequate to complete the task, to turn a nation that is 80% violent or against us into a totally peaceful nation, for the sake of 20% of the people there.

We should continue to defend the oil, but significantly scale back other operations we are doing there.

Honestly, the only thing of value any American can get from keeping the Iraq war going the same way it is, is the value (to Republicans) of not letting themselves look like total idiots for having invaded in the first place. If they continue to stay, they can continue to pretend that things are going to get better if we just keep dumping 2 or 3 trillion dollars an thousands of dead and permanently injured American troops into the effort every five years or so. America loses; the corrupt Republican politicians get to continue their glamorous lives.

That is the only honest reason we are still staying in Iraq, to make George Bush look good, and that is why everyone's son or daughter has died over there past a certain point that has already well passed, and don't you forget it.

Now that Petraeus is saying it too, does that make it OK?

No. The rest of us are still Defeatocrat commie traitors.

You see, Petraeus is saying it because it means we should stay. The people who said it because they think the "surge" has been a waste of american lives and treasure (and ultimately of iraqi lives as well) are still objectively pro-saddam, or something.

But realistically it's even worse than that, because if it was really about the strategic decisions of the sunni and sadrist military factions, then the number of US troops is next to irrelevant. Any time the two groups decide it's in their interest to step up the killing again, a few companies of guys in up-armored humvees won't necessarily make a big difference.

Petraeus is just saying that the surge has worked so well that it caught the Iraqis off guard. They'll probably need about six months to catch up.

US isn't going anywhere:

January 22, 2007
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bob-cesca/unsolved-mystery-the-ira_b_39280.html

"Of course reducing the violence in Baghdad should be a huge priority... so civilians can walk the streets and eat and go to work and worship without, you know, dying. But dammit, securing the streets of Baghdad with American blood so Rich Western Oil Executive White Guy X can breathe easier?"

May 23, 2007
http://www.dennis4president.com/go/newsroom/the-truth-about-oil-and-iraq/

"...at $70 a barrel, we are looking here at a potential value of Iraqi oil at being about $21 trillion." [revenues going not back into the US general fund from which the Iraq War was funded, but into the pockets of Big Oil. me]

September 25, 2007
http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/oil/2007/0925oilgrab.htm

"...to provide ample opportunities to America's Oil Majors to reap handsome profits in an oil-rich Iraq whose vast western desert had yet to be explored fully for hydrocarbons."

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2007-08-23-Iraqembassy_N.htm

And the 65-acre Iraq Embassy Fortress was completed last year in Baghdad's Green Zone at $592 million.

US isn't going anywhere.

You can watch a live webcast of the Iraq Winter Soldier hearings that started today and continue through the weekend, sponsored by Iraq Veterans Against The War (IVAW):

http://ivaw.org/index.php

As with the Winter Soldier hearings of 1971 during the Vietnam war, veterans of the invasion and occupation of Iraq are testifying as to their first-hand knowledge and experience of war crimes committed by US troops in Iraq -- including themselves.

The hearings are also being broadcast on the Pacifica radio network, for example WPFW in Washington, DC is audio-streaming them over their website (the hearings are being held in Silver Spring, Maryland just outside DC).

I will caution you that I have been listening to the veterans' testimony this morning, and even if you think you have a sense of what's been going on in Iraq, you may find their testimony shocking and extremely disturbing. Listen at your own risk.

A lot of war critics have been saying this exact same thing for months. Now that Petraeus is saying it too, does that make it OK?

Of course not. Petraeus is one of the "commanders on the ground" and you're still a dirty, America-blaming hippie.

Why should the Iraqis cooperate to make the foreign management of their country easier? Why should they assist the US occupation reach Dick Cheney’s goals? Their goal is to make the American stay as fruitless and expensive as possible. Unity may be beyond them at this point.

The Iraqis have forever to wait for the US guard to drop or for the money to run out- so do the Iranians. The strategic goal was to render the states of Iraq and Iran – they were previously treated as contained states- as irrelevant in the game for Gulf oil and as threats to Israel. The only other real goal was permanent bases to dominate the great game and oil deals that favor American companies.

Petreaus is tell us that the pacification is something of an illusion and that the Iraqis have not created the security guarantees the occupation force desires, nor have the Iraqis allowed the US to set up a puppet government that could impose the order necessary for Dick Cheney’s reorganization schemes to work.

The US will end up undermined from multiple directions. It will be partly Indian-style nationalism and partly Algerian-style resistance. No doubt the US will withdraw to the castle-like bases. They will try to maintain them against every kind of assault- military or political, but we saw what happened to the British in Basra. It was supposed to be like the Philippines invasion a century ago, but it is already the most expensive war since WWII and the longest war besides Vietnam.

Only the careless corrupt gang who have seized control of the Presidency could have kept it going for so long.

It should be noted that this is what Patraeus is saying NOW. He doesn't testify to Congress until next month. That's a lot of time for the administration get a hold of him, make him backpedal, tweak his comments, and then suddenly "no one feels there has been sufficient progress" becomes "things are progressing but more work needs to be done". Same ol' Same ol'.....

Of course we have to stay there, we need to stage the invasion of Iran from there.