If only...

If you watch enough sporting events you'll eventually observe a particularly frustrating form of defeat - when the team that was being beaten finally figures out what they were doing wrong and mounts a comeback - only to be denied because time has run out.

As I have said before, the tragedy of George Bush's Iraq policy was that he took a dangerous, but necessary idea (combating militant Islam in the heart of the Mideast) and wrecked it with stubbornness, arrogance and incompetence. If only we had not mislead the American people about why toppling Saddam was necessary (it had nothing to do with WMD)...if only there had been a comprehensive economic and political plan after the initial invasion - lead by talented people instead of yes men...if only we had brought in enough force to quell any ideas of an insurgency (like we did in Bosnia where the mantra of "we're going to be the biggest dog on the street" worked wonders in a situation that was initially much more bleak than Iraq)...and if only the right commander had been in place once the insurgency started.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18252538/

The link above is to an article that is striking in its forthrightness. Frankly, coming from someone the Bush administration trusts, it's downright amazing. If any man can parlay a 5% chance of success into the real thing, it's General Petraeus, and the more I read, the more I believe this man could have turned things around as late as about a year ago. I'm assuming that the Iraqis would have started making progress toward settling their differences if the environment had been calmer, but at least there would have been some chance of that. Now all we have is a Hail Mary (another sports analogy).

As far as the candidates for President, even my candidate fails woefully at understanding the repercussions of the current Iraq situation. Pulling out our troops without a plan is as bad as going in without a plan - and I haven't seen any kind of thoughtful plan from Barack Obama or any other troop pullout candidate. The President's defenders seem as clueless now as they did back when this whole mess started. When Harry Reid says the war is lost and the Republicans immediately attack him for deserting the troops and being a "defeatocrat", you can see nothing's changed on the conservative side either.

Only one man with any influence seems to get it. General Petraeus has to battle Sunni insurgents, Shiite death squads, Al Quaeda, troop exhaustion and a woefully inexperienced and partly corrupt Iraqi government. Despite all this, I think some very small steps have been made over the past two months in Iraq.

The question is...is there any time left on the clock?