When will reality set in

The cognitive dissonance coming for the Administration hit a high mark today. Bush’s stubborn insistence that the war is winnable, even at this late date, boggles the mind. It seems he can’t wrap his head around the fact that he and Rummy have bungled this enterprise from the start, rendering Iraq into a state of civil war. The situation is irredeemable or, at least, the Marines say so.

The U.S. military is no longer able to defeat a bloody insurgency in western Iraq or counter al-Qaeda's rising popularity there, according to newly disclosed details from a classified Marine Corps intelligence report that set off debate in recent months about the military's mission in Anbar province.

[Snip]

But the contents have not previously been made public. Read as a complete assessment, it paints a stark portrait of a failed province and of the country's Sunnis -- once dominant under Saddam Hussein -- now desperate, fearful and impoverished. They have been increasingly abandoned by religious and political leaders who have fled to neighboring countries, and other leaders have been assassinated. And unlike Iraq's Shiite majority, or Kurdish groups in the north, the Sunnis are without oil and other natural resources. The report notes that illicit oil trading is providing millions of dollars to al-Qaeda while "official profits appear to feed Shiite cronyism in Baghdad."

As a result, "the potential for economic revival appears to be nonexistent" in Anbar, the report says. The Iraqi government, dominated by Iranian-backed Shiites, has not paid salaries for Anbar officials and Iraqi forces stationed there. Anbar's resources and its ability to impose order are depicted as limited at best.

"Despite the success of the December elections, nearly all government institutions from the village to provincial levels have disintegrated or have been thoroughly corrupted and infiltrated by Al Qaeda in Iraq," or a smattering of other insurgent groups, the report says.

In summary, we have created a situation where Al Qaeda in Iraq is funding itself, the government is corrupt and shot through with insurgent and or terrorist sympathizers, and the province is in chaos. We lost. Time to leave.

Counter this stark reality with the bright and shiny thoughts floating through President Happy Talk’s head like so much freshly spun cotton candy.

RIGA, Latvia (AP) -- President Bush, under pressure to change direction in Iraq, said Tuesday he will not be persuaded by any calls to withdraw American troops before the country is stabilized.

"There's one thing I'm not going to do, I'm not going to pull our troops off the battlefield before the mission is complete," he said in a speech setting the stage for high-stakes meetings with the Iraqi prime minister later this week. "We can accept nothing less than victory for our children and our grandchildren."

[Snip]

"We'll continue to be flexible and we'll make the changes necessary to succeed," the president said.

Bush pushed back against skeptics of his goal of spreading freedom across the Middle East. "I understand these doubts but I do not share them," the president said.

So on the one hand, the military states we cannot win and on the other, Bush says we aren’t leaving until we prevail. We are going to pour more soldiers and money into this failed experiment until when...

Meanwhile, the Italians are pulling out and the Brits are giving it some serious consideration. They seem to understand the state of affairs in Iraq and are going to cut their losses. Bush, however, either does not get it or does not care.

I shudder to think about the damage this man can cause in the next two years.