Tisdall, Gruadnia:

An elite team of officers advising the US commander, General David Petraeus, in Baghdad has concluded that they have six months to win the war in Iraq – or face a Vietnam-style collapse in political and public support that could force the military into a hasty retreat…

The main obstacles confronting Gen Petraeus’s team are:

Insufficient troops on the ground

A “disintegrating” international coalition

An anticipated increase in violence in the south as the British leave

Morale problems as casualties rise

A failure of political will in Washington and/or Baghdad.

The team is an unusual mix of combat experience and academic achievement. It includes Colonel Peter Mansoor, a former armoured division commander with a PhD in the history of infantry; Colonel HR McMaster, author of a well-known critique of Vietnam and a seasoned counter-insurgency operations chief; Lt-Col David Kilcullen, a seconded Australian officer and expert on Islamism; and Colonel Michael Meese, son of the former US attorney-general Edwin Meese, who was a member of the ill-fated Iraq Study Group…

“Additional troops are essential if we are to win,” said Lt-Col John Nagel, co-author of the [counterinsurgency] manual, in an address at the US Naval Institute in San Diego last month. One soldier for every 50 civilians in the most intense conflict areas [corresponding to about 300,000-500,000 combat troops] was key to successful counter-insurgency work.

Not to worry. No matter that Iraq has gone on longer than WW II without a single discernible victory, no matter that the rest of the world long ago walked away from the mess, the Publicans will blame us, same as for everything else.