At some point, after months of trumpeting our failures, hiding our successes, declaring at every point that we cannot win and that the enemy is unbeatable, that our side is guilty of every possible transgression and the other side's atrocities are dismissed, it becomes pretty difficult to avoid such a conclusion, both for people on the internet and in the media.

And January is only beginning. The negativity in the press is going to go full-bore in the following weeks. The insurgency knows they just have to keep the violence up for the media to declare them the winners. The Baathists and terrorists play a lot of the American media like the useful idiots they are.