Someone please tell me why Chalabi should not have contact with the Iranian’s considering the fact that Iran is not going anywhere but the Americans are leaving? Perhaps what Odierno is complaining about is that Chalabi (and others) while thinking about the future have chosen to become tools of the nest door co-religionist Iranians rather than choosing to be tools of the fast departing Americans?

...did this venture into Iraq seem sensible? Mind-boggling stupid beginning, muddled middle - we should expect a good ending?

Life's Rule: If it feels bad, quit doing it.

Life's Fallacy: When one makes a hopeless investment, one sometimes reasons: I can’t stop now, otherwise what I’ve invested so far will be lost. This is true, of course, but irrelevant to whether one should continue to invest in the project. Everything one has invested is lost regardless. If there is no hope for success in the future from the investment, then the fact that one has already lost a bundle should lead one to the conclusion that the rational thing to do is to withdraw from the project. (from the Skeptics Dictionary)

Congress and the public are unaware since the media keeps writing about the "successful surge" in Iraq. Could Mr. Ricks contact those people and tell them not to mislead people because if now looks like the surge was a farce?

What happens if attacks and casualties don't go up in the run-up to the March election or afterward? What if the affect of all the anti-Baathist hysteria going on right now is voter turnout goes down? What happens if after the elections the parties take months to put together a government just like last time, and it ends up looking pretty much like the current government with the large Kurdish and Shiite parties in control? What happens if the Baathist hype then ends? Will the alarm calls about an impending civil war continue?

The political rhetoric right now is a return to 2005. The two main Shiite parties don't have much to run on so they've jumped on this Baathist bandwagon. Otherwise it's not like 2005. Attacks and deaths have hit a plateua since Jan. 09. Sadr's militia is basically inactive, the Iranian-backed Special Groups only carry out 4-5 attacks a month. The insurgency is pretty much reduced to hit and run and terrorist attacks. In comparison, in 2005 deaths and attacks were going up up up, and the insurgents and militias were still strong and growing. Sorry, but I don't see a civil war coming. I just see more of the same with poverty, corruption, a bloated state-run economy, a dysunfctional government, and Iraqis becoming disillusioned with what's transpired.

that there was a anti-Iraq war candidate that could have won in 2004. He or she would have pulled out in 2005 and might have transferred more troops to Afghanistan, perhaps even while withdrawing political support from Karzai. (okay, it's a pipe dream, but at least I'm not dreaming about a pacifist president!). What a better position we'd currently find ourselves in, including financially.

After seeing you speak at the Harvard Bookstore, I did a double take when somebody called you optimistic about Iraq.

is that the logic behind maliki abject pandering to iran--that he might as well take the allies that he can rely on for future sectarian conflict? ahmed chalabi makes me physically nauseous. the fact that this man was connected at the top levels of our government is probably the most devastating single indictment of the former administration. unfortunately, he and maliki are creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. either way, joe biden looks like an absolute idiot. he might want to consider that his iraq brief will not diminish in importance just because the american people, in their characteristic schizophrenia, seem to have temporarily lost interest. it's the middle east, joe. the only thing we can hope for is to get the hell out before it falls to the iranians to hold the sword of damocles over our heads. it boggles the mind how the people who created this mess (including biden--i love how democrats totally disassociate themselves from this debacle by falling back on their criticism from 2005-2008: In his infinite wisdom Joe proposed to divvy up Iraq--somehow that's supposed to absolve him) are the same ones who forget about the precarious situations we are bogged down in on both of Iran's borders.

in response to a previous comment, it really does look like the iranians get more out of chalabi than we ever did. what gives?

This is from Kazimi's blog Talisman Gate. He's in Iraq right now.

"Although there is general anxiety, no one believes that sectarian tensions would get out of hand. Experienced hands don’t see a return to violence on any significant scale, not withstanding what a few frazzled and perennially mistaken Western journalists are writing these days."

I don't see a renewed round of sectarian genocide on the horizon.
Maybe I am being too optimistic.
The Sunnis are going to put up and shut up, just like the Shia did under the previous regime(s).
The one thing Iraq does have now that it did not have in 2005/2006 is a sizable security apparatus.
We can all make endless ISF jokes and swap anecdotes of their hilarious ineptitude - but the ISF of 2010 is not the ISF of 2005.

Isn't there are least one major difference between 2005 and today? That is, the ISF and Iraqi Police are better equipped and prepared to counter an insurgency? Of course, they are not as well equipped as 160,000 US troops, who will be gone, but then again the militias and insurgents can't possibly be as well positioned as they were then, right? After all, the militia composition is quite different also, I believe.