First: al-Sadr called a halt to his own fighting in early 2006 -- long before the Surge. It's a pretty safe bet that he did so because he thought that his party had a good chance of winning the upcoming election -- which it still does. (Al-Maliki is also perfectly well aware of this, which is the main reason he's now decided to tell most of the US troops to get lost in the near future. After all, that's the position of 3/4 of Iraqis in the series of ABC-BBC polls of the country, including the most recent one in February (despite the fact that Iraqis are somewhat more optimistic now than they were last September) -- see pg. 29-32 and 38.

Second, there's the fact pointed out by Eric Martin that -- contrary to the propaganda eagerly promulgated both by the White House and by McCain -- our Faithful New Sunni Friends acquired in the Anbar Awakening are anything but:

"While it is true that many former Sunni insurgents have ceased attacks on the Shiite-led Iraqi government and US forces (opting, instead, to collaborate with US forces in going after AQI and, in turn, establish local fiefdoms and receive money, arms and other support) that represents a temporary, contingent and highly precarious truce. Not an end but a pause (and not a complete pause either).

"As recently as Friday, [some] Sunni leaders reiterated their demands: either the Maliki government must integrate their cadres into the Iraq Security Forces (ISF), or they will resume the fighting -- and they want more money to boot. The Maliki government has, thus far, made it clear that it will only allow a tiny fraction of the Sunni forces into the ISF, and so the stage is set for a future battle. Making matters worse, many of these Sunni elements have been quite brazen in stating their intention to lay low in anticipation of the right opportunity to launch operations to 'retake' Baghdad from the Shiites -- which explains, in part, Maliki's reluctance to welcome large numbers of these groups into the ISF." (By the way, in that February poll, 62% of Sunnis and 43% of Shiites told the ABC-BBC pollsters that they still regard "attacks on coalition forces" as "acceptable".)

So, you'll excuse me if I regard the current "success" of the Surge as being about as reassuring as the silence of Mt. Pelee was to the inhabitants of St. Pierre just before the side blew out of it.

The political solution would never have occurred without the surge.

Doesn't matter, the surge couldn't have made it occur, some other action had to do that. The success of that other action depended on the success of the surge, but the success of the surge should never have been made dependent on the success of that other action.

The surge can not produce a political solution, so it should never have been used as a stated goal of the surge. As you said, the surge could remove obstacles to a political solution, but it cannot actively promote one.

The political solution would never have occurred without the surge.

Better yet, just take a drink of it every time Hal says "Geebus", it'll become a new OTB drinking game

No fair! By then, he's already got a head start!

Well, the number of provinces now being fully controlled by Iraqi forces leaps to mind. Certainly, unattainable pre-surge. Them taking ownership of the situation... wasn't that one of the stated goals, even from a political standpoint?

And how is that not tactical in nature?

What was needed for a political solutino was to secure the region against people who would given the chance prevent that political solution. That being done, there is a sense of momentum now, toward the goal on both parts where there was none previously.

You are perpetuating the problem, Bit. The surge can not produce a political solution, so it should never have been used as a stated goal of the surge. As you said, the surge could remove obstacles to a political solution, but it cannot actively promote one.

If you say that a political solution was a goal of the surge, then the surge failed. This is what Obama and most Democrats are saying, that the Bush administration said the surge would produce a political solution, and that by this definition it has not succeeded.

And I suspect and suppose that the biggest problem that the Democrats have with all of this is that rather than the picture the Democrats were painting, of them heroically stopping a hopeless war, we have a picture of a Republican White House winning the war, despite their contunual roadblocks to victory... despite their actively seeking our defeat...and the Democrats trying to explain to angry voters why losing the war would have been better.

You suspect and suppose wrongly.

never said I expected you to go directly to the document before I gave the key words to the document.

Um, read your comment again. The way I certainly took your comment was the literal words you wrote. Certainly, that was the same interpretation that Michael seemed to have.

It depends on which comment and when the sequence of the posts, but I did/do expect that someone could with a certain amount of searching find that document. I would not expect them to pull the document name directly out of thin air before knowing it existed. (i.e. before I post knowledge of its existence)

I searched for keywords like you used initally, (surge, goals, success... etc). I found some rambling posts with the six fundamental mentioned. I switched the search to the wording from the six fundamentals, and found the dkosopedia entry, which pointed to the whitehouse factsheet. I didn't know that there anysuch thing as whitehouse factsheets before this exercise. (apparently anjin still doesn't think they exist) ;)

Again, the point is, if you have the info - which you claim you did - and don't give the link, WTF are you doing that for?

Already answered, at least to my own satisfaction.

Well, BY THAT TIME, I was rather pissed at having someone tell me I was being a lazy slob and couldn't find the information that they had but were withholding because they wanted to school me. Certainly, BY THAT TIME, the conversation had already degenerated to where no one was even interested in it any more. In my comment I found the summary, which essentially contained the same info, and openly asked if that was a good enough document stating the objectives. Crickets chirping until Grewgills came up with a better match.

never said I expected you to go directly to the document before I gave the key words to the document.

Um, read your comment again. The way I certainly took your comment was the literal words you wrote. Certainly, that was the same interpretation that Michael seemed to have.

Again, the point is, if you have the info - which you claim you did - and don't give the link, WTF are you doing that for? Further, when you claim you hold the info and withhold the link AND THEN put a barb in your comment suggesting I'm just not actually trying, then how the heck do you think I'm going to respond? And then you come back sporting a full on scold telling us that all we had to do was enter in the right search term and we would have found it.

Geebus

<and yes, that's now two beers>

AFTER I said the goals were in such a document, why wouldn't you just find the document to find the goals. BEFORE this then you have do just google and search, which is what I did. My googling led me to the document. Even after Grewgills gave the link to the document the complaining didnt' cease.

I didn't know what I was looking for either, It took me several. I finally (15 minutes) found a link in dkosopedia to the whitehouse factsheet, and found a PDF presentation under that. I never said I expected you to go directly to the document before I gave the key words to the document.

Geebus.

Hmmm, my game idea may not work so well during business hours.

and it would appear as the first google entry.

Wow. So if you put in the exact phrase you're looking for into google, it shows up? Blow me over with a whisper.

Rodney, this is just pure bunk. I have no idea why I would have entered any of those terms into google when I was looking for objective measurements surge petraeus, etc. You'll note that for your magic query to work - the one you think everyone should have been working hard to find - has nothing whatsoever to do with the actual issue we were trying to find.

NOTHING.

Yes, in retrospect, if you you know what you're looking for, it's really easy to find! Apparently you think we should have all just known that this information was there in Bush's SOTU address! Boy are we just ignorant, lazy fools!

Again, 1) you are being incredibly pedantic because you think that's you're role here, or 2) you're being an incredible d*ck, or 3) you literally don't understand why it's an issue, which almost puts you Dr. B's league.

I was betting on #1, but after your comment which is again preaching from on high about how simple it would have been to find if you only entered int the right search phrase, I'm beginning to strongly suspect #3.

I mean, next you'll tell me if I have the right key a lock is easy to open! Or if I guess the right password, it's easy to open someone's account.

Geebus.

Thread scrable. My bad.
I owe you a beer.

I don't drink beer, so just donate it to charity instead.

Oh wait, you quoted my post, but you're not actually responding to me, are you?

Thread scrable. My bad.
I owe you a beer.

Kind of a self-canceling phrase,

Well that one is actually pretty funny, reminiscent of George Carlin.