I think the point of the article you linked to was that the surge is NOT working, in fact it's irrelevant, because there is no political progress occurring. So you are running up a lop-sided body count, as you did in Viet Nam, but the puppet government you are trying to foist upon the people are not able to govern. Sound familiar?
If in fact you kill or capture 1,000 insurgents a month, even if it went on for a year, you'd only account for 12,000 insurgents, a number which a country of 23 million can easily replace from a single graduating class of 18-year-olds. But in reality, it would never be permitted to go on for a year - - the insurgents, IF they could not afford the losses, would make the decision to lie low or to disperse. Outwait you. And then start up again. This is the advantage of the home team.
As your article points out, Warner, another die-hard war supporter who now sees the problems correctly, is another crack in the wall. Levin and others now call openly for the replacement of al Maliki - - without ANY idea of who the new puppet should be. It's kind of humiliating, I agree, when your own puppet starts talking back to you.
The fact that they DON'T pull all the troops out of Germany to "run with the win" should tell you something: that whatever purpose the troops are serving IN Germany isn't worth sacrificing for "victory"in Iraq because they already know that there will be no victory there and the German-based troops can't alter that fact. In other words, the situation in Iraq is hopeless, the "surge" is a fraud designed to win a few more months for Bush, who doesn't want to be stuck with the final humiliation of defeat.
Personally, I feel the war would be winnable with a much larger surge, and I previously suggested a force of 500,000 and a thirty-year occupation with very strict rules that would, without torture, arbitrarily deprive Iraqis of every known civil right except the right to life and decent living conditions. There is no way the U.S. is going to devote the resources really needed to win this war, and the reason for that is very simple. Since the only point of this criminal aggression is, and always has been, from the inception, to secure the U.S. a cheap source of oil and/or some significant measure of control over the sources of energy needed by its economic rivals, a monetary value can be placed on the success of the operation. The actual cost of doing the job right is so far in excess of the economic benefits of victory that no sane individual in the administration will authorize it.
