HEY, A FORMER ARMY COLONEL said essentially the same thing about stalemate in Iraq that I said in my post (below this one) about Afghanistan.

"It really does seem to me the war is stalemated in that the enemy, which has shown great resilience, cannot defeat us militarily, but neither do we have the capacity to eliminate the insurgency through military means," said retired Army Col. Andrew Bacevich, a Boston University international relations professor.

And from the same article, John Aravosis picks out a quote by Lawrence DiRita about why failure is really success:

Chief Pentagon spokesman Lawrence Di Rita urged people not to gauge the war based on the volume of rebel bombings. "That's not a good way to determine how good or bad things are going -- by (counting) how many things are exploding," Di Rita said.

"Nobody's trying to hide from that reality. It's a tough reality," he said. "But it's a tough reality in which, I think, generally the people that are closest to it, the Iraqi political leaders and our commanders, feel (there is) reason for some optimism despite all the violence."

Begging to differ, but Iraqi political leaders and U.S. commanders are not the people closest to the violence in Iraq. Especially not the top commanders, hiding in the Green Zone and surrounding themselves with bodyguards whenever they venture outside.

Here is a person much closer to the violence in Iraq than Iraqi political leaders and U.S. top commanders. And here is another one. And another one here.