ARTICLE: "Gulf Allies Support Goals Of New U.S. Strategy in Iraq: A carefully worded endorsement, but no commitments to help," by Thom Shanker, New York Times, 17 January 2006, p. A9.

ARTICLE: Insurgencies Rarely Win – And Iraq Won’t Be Any Different (Maybe), By Donald Stoker, January 2007

Not a great sign: we're basically down to Saudi Arabia and the GCC and all they're offering are words to the effect that they desperately want Iraq not to break up.

Their commitments to that end? None really. They just really really really don't want that to happen, because if it did, they'd finally be forced into doing something.

We are past the point of "winning" against the insurgency, which--by and large--has been superseded by the dynamics of sectarian violence aimed at the 3-state solution (for lack of a better phrase).

So while the Stokes article is both hopeful and correct, it's also an OBE observation--as in, overtaken by events.

Bush and Co. had their chance with the insurgency. This show is now all about managing Iraq's devolution so that enough unity (or at least the functional facade of unity) can be maintained for eventual economic solution sets to emerge.

As I started writing (now) years ago, the real exit strategy is jobs. Problem for Bush is, once you spiral a society deep into 70 percent unemployment, you've lost all control of the "reconstruction."

Now it's the construction of Iraq 2.0. No matter how that unfolds, no one is going to paint it as a "victory" in any recognizable sense.

So please, do yourself a favor and avoid any "winning/losing" arguments, because they are meaningless.

That's the reality we face, given the choices we've made to date.