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GETTING REAL. Finally, an honest public appraisal of the situation in Iraq:
The new American operational commander in Iraq said Sunday that even with the additional American troops likely to be deployed in Baghdad under President Bush�s new war strategy it might take another �two or three years� for American and Iraqi forces to gain the upper hand in the war.Just call it Bush's seven-year war. If Odierno is correct, this doesn't just mean a strategy of punting the escalated conflict into the next president's lap; it means continuing it into the middle of his or her term, at the very earliest, and treating any attempt to withdraw before 2010 -- or, more likely, 2011 or 12, since the time estimates for this war have had a way of slipping -- as a premature concession to failure. No real surprise there, of course, but good to have it out in the open.The commander, Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, assumed day-to-day control of war operations last month in the first step of a makeover of the American military hierarchy here.
--Garance Franke-Ruta
