Iraq War: Another look from 2004

"I think we are winning.  Okay?  I think we're definitely winning.  I think we've been winning for some time." - Gen. Richard Myers, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on the Iraq War 04/26/05

"I just wonder if they will ever tell us the truth." - Harold Casey, Louisville, KY, October 2004

This 2004 article from prior to the presidential election defined the no-win situation that still prevails in the Iraq War: Iraq's future path uncertain because of insurgency by Ken Dilanian, Knight-Ridder 10/16/04.

With little prospect of a decisive military victory and even less chance of recruiting significant international help, that leaves the next president with the same unpleasant options:

- Continue fighting the insurgency and trying to rebuild the country with roughly the same number of American troops, in the hope that elections in January will turn the political tide against the insurgents and that newly trained Iraqi police and security forces can learn to defeat them.

- Send thousands more American troops to Iraq in hopes of defeating the insurgency, sealing the country's borders and buying time for a new Iraqi government to get on its feet. Escalation, however, would further strain America's active, National Guard and reserve forces and risk turning even more Iraqis against the U.S.-led coalition.

- Begin withdrawing American troops and handing the country over to a new government and its newly trained police and security forces. Iraq's defense minister, however, recently told Knight Ridder that American troops could be needed for as many as 15 more years, and a precipitous withdrawal could plunge the country into chaos or even civil war.

"The unpalatable options are either to make things worse slowly, by keeping our troopsthere, or to make things worse quickly, by withdrawing them," said James Dobbins, a nation-building expert who was President Bush's envoy to Afghanistan. The presence of U.S. troops fuels the insurgency by inflaming Iraqi nationalism, but their absence would mean chaos, he said. (my emphasis)

This article also quotes Toby Dodge of the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS):

Yet some experts argue that, even if Americans and Iraqis do wrestle the country into stability over the course of years, the stark failures of the occupation and the damage they've done to U.S. credibility rank as a major foreign policy debacle.

"It's not Vietnam- yet - but it is a huge blow tothe U.S. ability to project power abroad," said Toby Dodge, an Iraq expert at Queen Mary University in London. "The Bush doctrine died on the outskirts of Baghdad."

That doctrine threatened pre-emptive war against rogue states that harbored terrorists or weapons of mass destruction. But two alleged state sponsors of terror that Bush wanted to deter by toppling Saddam Hussein - Iran and Syria - now can be confident that America doesn't have the troop strength to invade them, Dodge said. (my emphasis)

It also contains this prediction from an unidentified American official:

The United States is planning a broader offensive against insurgents in major Sunni Muslim cities such as Fallujah before the January Iraqi elections. "Get the Sunni triangle under control, and most of the rest of the country will go along," the senior administration official said.

Well, Fallujah was levelled.  But establishing control of the so-called Sunni triangle hasn't been achieved yet.  Or control of Baghdad.  Or control of the short highway from Baghdad to the Baghdad International Airport.