Yeah, right, Lucy's really not going to snatch the football away this time. Sure, and Duhbya's tax cuts went to the poor, and the Bushists restored honesty to government, and everything else is fine, too. Right. Yeah. Sure.

Liberty and justice for all.

Meanwhile, the latest surge in Diyala is already failing in the same way prior offensives have: Al Qaeda got out of Dodge before the campaign even began.

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The big fight now is over whether or not Petraeus leaked the coming campaign to AQI, or if it was just obvious that an operation was coming.

Either way, we've never had enough troops in Iraq to slam the door on AQI. And the Iraqi army has proven itself utterly incapable of establishing order itself. The only people who have had a modicum of success fighting Al Qaeda are other Sunni insurgents. It seems if we leave Iraq, the other Sunnis will take care of AQI themselves. What are we waiting for?

Excellent question! What ARE we waiting for? We're just sustaining this mess by playing cat and mouse with the enemy. We come they go. We leave they return. It doesn't take a brain surgeon to realize none of our strategies can work as long as Iraq is divided against itself. What's the old saying? "A house divided against itself cannot stand?" I guess that was before they knew about propping up other peoples' governments.