"Democratic leaders in Congress had planned to use August recess to raise the heat on Republicans to break with President Bush on the Iraq war. Instead, Democrats have been forced to recalibrate their own message in the face of recent......

Declare Victory and Go Home.

That is what will happen at some point. Since the Victory we want (stable government that hates Iran, Syria, Hezbollah and Hamas) isn't going to happen in any of our lifetimes, we will ultimately have to decide that Victory has occurred. This is why I have been mildly optimistic about the surge. If we can put enough troops in to reduce the amount of visible violence, it will give us the opportunity to Declare Victory and Go Home regardless of the political progress of the Iraqis. The current distancing of the US from the Maliki gov't and a positive report from Petraeus will provide a great opportunity to implement the Declared Victory.

Or you can look here where I've plotted them for you:

Swordscrossed

Most everyone acknowledges that the Surge seems to be having significant success...

Unless you look at the numbers. if you do that there is no indication of significant success at all. Casualties among either Iraqis or american troops have not significantly declined. Attacks in baghdad are down but the insurgents have just moved to other areas as with each of our previous "surges."

The people saying the surge is working are coincidentally people who either are personally invested in it working, or the same people who advocated our invasion in the first place because the WMD intelligence was a "slam dunk."

You'd think four years later we'd learn not to trust the William Kristol's of the world.