Only you have. Everywhere we go, we kick ass, but there aren't enough of us. The civilian death toll continues to mount.

Sure, Petraeus is good at his job, and if he had a few hundred thousand more men, or if he had started a few years earlier, or both, things might have turned out very differently. Whatever success the surge has, it is meaningless unless the local constabulary evolves to the point where it can take over. It hasn't and it won't. They've all joined the militias.

Actually, I agree with you. Petraeus hasn't been given a fair chance to pull it off, and the goal posts have been moved on him. But I can turn that back around at you. If these new ideas are so obviously effective, why did the Bush gang have to be dragged kicking and screaming to implement them after four bloody years of denial? September is way too early to judge the effectiveness of these new policies, I suspect the date was picked just to postpone the inevitable in case a miracle happened.

A few more months is going to make no difference. With a draft, several hundred thousand more men, 5 or 10 more years, Gen Petraeus could probably pull it off. Maybe. Rumsfeld should have thought about that a long time ago.