Tear-brassing out of Iraq

First the Freedom Fries guy abandoned Bush and now, so it seems, have some US military brass. Iraq sucks. They don't want to play anymore. But they might be willing to negotiate.

BAGHDAD, Iraq - A growing number of senior American military officers in Iraq have concluded that there is no long-term military solution to an insurgency that has killed thousands of Iraqis and more than 1,300 U.S. troops during the past two years.

Instead, officers say, the only way to end the guerilla war is through Iraqi politics - an arena that so far has been crippled by divisions between Shiite Muslims, whose coalition dominated the January elections, and Sunni Muslims, who are a minority in Iraq but form the base of support for the insurgency.

"I think the more accurate way to approach this right now is to concede that ... this insurgency is not going to be settled, the terrorists and the terrorism in Iraq is not going to be settled, through military options or military operations," Brig. Gen. Donald Alston, the chief U.S. military spokesman in Iraq, said last week, in a comment that echoes what other senior officers say. "It's going to be settled in the political process."

[snip]

The recognition that a military solution is not in the offing has led U.S. and Iraqi officials to signal they are willing to negotiate with insurgent groups, or their intermediaries.

"It has evolved in the course of normal business," said a senior U.S. diplomatic official in Baghdad, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of U.S. policy to defer to the Iraqi government on Iraqi political matters. "We have now encountered people who at least claim to have some form of a relationship with the insurgency."

The message is markedly different from previous statements by U.S. officials who spoke of quashing the insurgency by rounding up or killing "dead enders" loyal to former dictator Saddam Hussein. As recently as two weeks ago, in a Memorial Day interview on CNN's "Larry King Live," Vice President Dick Cheney said he believed the insurgency was in its "last throes."

As I noted previously, it was all over once Bush lost the support of the Freedom Fries guy.