How bad is it in Iraq?

In a word, pretty bad. Bob Herbert's column this morning sums it up in the title, No End in Sight in Iraq

Writing about Vietnam in the foreword to David Halberstam's book "The Best and the Brightest," Senator John McCain said:

"It was a shameful thing to ask men to suffer and die, to persevere through god-awful afflictions and heartache, to endure the dehumanizing experiences that are unavoidable in combat, for a cause that the country wouldn't support over time and that our leaders so wrongly believed could be achieved at a smaller cost than our enemy was prepared to make us pay."

That point is no less relevant now. The administration is not willing to commit to an all-out effort to defeat the insurgents in Iraq, and is equally unwilling to reverse course and bring the troops home. Most Americans are abandoning the idea that the war can be "won." Polls are showing that they're tired of the conflict and its relentlessly mounting toll. It's hard to imagine that the population at large will be willing to sacrifice thousands of additional American lives over several more years in pursuit of goals that remain as murky as ever.

Unfortunately since he wrote the forward to Halberstam's book John McCain has become just as much a political hack as the politicians he wrote about. The goals are "murky" because the real goals were never stated and the public goals have proven to be groundless. People supported the war intially because they thought it would make things safer on the home front. A majority now see it has had the opposite effect.

Iraqnam

When Lyndon Johnson sent American troops into the flaming disaster of Vietnam he had no real strategy, no plan for winning the war. The idea, more or less, was that our boys, tougher and much better equipped, would beat their boys. Case closed. Fifty-eight thousand American troops succumbed to this schoolyard fantasy.

George W. Bush has no strategy, no real plan, for winning the war in Iraq. So we're stuck in a murderous quagmire without even the suggestion of an end in sight.

Meanwhile Juan Cole explains that it looks increasingly unlikely that any "real" consensus can be reached on an Iraqi constitution. The Kurds in the north and the Shia in the south, after being abused by the central govenment for years, want a loose federation.

Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, leader of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), has made his move. Giving a speech in the holy city of Najaf, he demanded that the nine southern Shiite-majority provinces be allowed to form a regional confederation that would deal with the central government in Baghdad. This confederation would mirror the "Kurdistan" confederation of northern provinces already established. The southern confederation, which some call "Sumer," in honor of the ancient civilization of that region, would make a claim on some percentage of the petroleum revenue coming out of the Rumaila oil fields.

Al-Hakim has split on this issue with Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, who earlier, at least, is said to have opposed the plan. He has also split with his coalition partner, the Dawa Party, led by Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari, which prefers that the central government continue to deal with each of the 9 provinces separately.

Although Dawa got the prime ministership and so has a special interest in retaining the prerogatives fo the center, SCIRI won most of the provincial elections in the south, dominating their governing councils. Since SCIRI believes that it can continue to be dominant in the Shiite south, it is essentially making a claim on provincial resources and power, denying some portion of them to the central government. It cannot be good for the prospects of the approval of a permanent constitution to have a major split develop within the United Iraqi Alliance (which has a majority in parliament and groups Dawa and SCIRI) on this issue.

In a Bloomberg Bill Roberts and Jeff St.Onge explain that Bush, Under Pressure to Cut Troops, Faces Dilemma in Iraq . The entire military is threatened by Bush's mis-adventure in Iraq.

On top of political concerns, Bush must grapple with military and strategic considerations in Iraq. Continuing to burden already-stretched U.S. forces poses risks, according to experts such as Lynn Davis, a senior analyst at the Santa Monica, Calfornia-based RAND Corp., which conducts research for governments and businesses.

More frequent combat tours in Iraq are hurting U.S. military preparedness, a RAND study published last month concluded. "The challenge the Army faces is profound," Davis, lead author of the report, said in an interview.

"The longer this goes on the more of a challenge it is," said Representative Vic Snyder, of Arkansas, the ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Personnel. "We are concerned the rotation schedule is such that there isn't time for troops to get rested and trained."

Welcome to George W. Bush's quagmire in the sand.