The problem with this idea is that "victory" is apparently defined as: "a stable central government (preferable democratic, but we'll take what we can get)"

That being the case, military force alone is woefully deficient for "victory"--we should also be applying signficant diplomatic efforts in an attempt to at least find some common ground for the largest and strongest contending factions in Iraq.

But we're not. Not even close. Ergo, the surge will fail. Miserably.

Evidently, there are 2 kinds of people — those who think that’s an argument, and those who don’t."

I will stand by my opinion, it is not an argument, and you, can stand by your opinion.
The carter administration will not go down in history as the most glorious days of American foreign policy and will not gain a reputation of protecting the US national security.

Zbigniew Brzezinski
National security adviser to President Carter.

Evidently, there are 2 kinds of people -- those who think that's an argument, and those who don't.

The RS piece was actually not all that different from Pollack/Cordesman, but more colorful-like.

What's that again, you said he was going to use the reactors for peaceful purposes, but he lied to you.
Welcome to the world of regimes that would kill you and your family and then sleep soundly at night.

Well, certainly, Cordesman has been a war opponent from the outset. And he was talking about guerrilla war by the summer of 2003 if not before.

Pollack's analysis has been pretty solid overall, I think. It's not as if the administration followed his advice along the way. Chris Suellentrop, writing in early March 2003:

Six months after The Threatening Storm's publication, however, Pollack's book reads as much like an indictment of the Bush administration's overeagerness to go to war as it does an endorsement of it. A more appropriate subtitle for the book would have been The Case for Rebuilding Afghanistan, Destroying al-Qaida, Setting Israel and Palestine on the Road to Peace, and Then, a Year or Two Down the Road After Some Diplomacy, Invading Iraq. In interviews and op-ed articles, Pollack himself still supports the war, saying that now is better than never. But it's fair to say that his book does not—or at least not Bush's path to it.

[...]

Pollack has even stated that an invasion, if not carried out skillfully enough, could be disastrous. In an October Policy Review piece co-authored by Ronald D. Asmus, Pollack wrote that toppling Saddam could "even be counterproductive" if the effort was "pursued in isolation." Pollack and Asmus argued that Saddam's removal should be the United States' third priority in its bid to transform the Middle East, after rebuilding Afghanistan (the "first place to start") and getting the Arab-Israeli conflict "under control." That same month, Pollack told NPR's Fresh Air that he worried that the Bush administration had not laid the proper groundwork for an Iraq invasion, adding that, "if we do it wrong we could create as many problems as we solve." In The Threatening Storm, Pollack cautions the United States against behaving as a "rogue superpower" that does whatever it wants, whenever it wants: "If we behave in this fashion, we will alienate our allies and convince much of the rest of the world to band together against us to try to keep us under control. Rather than increasing our security and prosperity, such a development would drastically undermine it."

Kagan is the only neocon on the panel and he's a true believer, to be sure. He's also had substantial impact intellectually on the war. Even he, though, has been a long time critic of the handling of the war, albeit one from the right.

One of their most notable members was was:
Zbigniew Brzezinski
National security adviser to President Carter.

It's also laughable that he would pass judgment on any situation in the Middle East.

It's like watching a train wreck.

Drum fronted this great line from former JSC general Tony McPeak:

America has been conducting an experiment for the past six years, trying to validate the proposition that it really doesn't make any difference who you elect president. Now we know the result of that experiment. If a guy is stupid, it makes a big difference.