From yesterday’s NYT:

Three months after the start of the Baghdad security plan that has added thousands of American and Iraqi troops to the capital, they control fewer than one-third of the city?s neighborhoods, far short of the initial goal for the operation, according to some commanders and an internal military assessment.

We are basically seeing small, localized, transient gains that evaporate as soon as US troops hand neighborhoods back to Iraqi control. In other words, the “surge” isn’t working. Not well enough to matter.

I fully expect that we will have a presence similar to our presence in […]