For Those Keeping Score at Home...

We have had no shortage of new strategies for Iraq. The casting about wildly has been going on for quite some time.

Who remembers Operation Together Forward, rolled out on 09 June 2006? Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki announced that in an effort to quell violence in Baghdad they would employ checkpoints and a curfew that kept Iraqis indoors from 9:00 pm to 6:00 am...I repeat...In June...In Baghdad...with spotty electric at best.

The result was not decreased violence. The plan failed utterly and completely. By the end of July, it was abandoned.

On July 25, 2007 Bush and Maliki announced that 4000 troops would be repositioned to Baghdad from other areas of the country. This action does nothing to quell the violence in Baghdad, and violence flared in the areas where troops had been pulled out. This led to Senator McCain's famous Whack-a-Mole remark.

Operation Together Forward II was introduced the first week of August. Joint teams of Iraqi and American soldiers began clearing neighborhoods, house-to-house. Areas that had been cleared were to be handed over to Iraqi police.

This nag barely made the first turn. The Iraqis had committed to provide six battalions, but only produced two. Areas that were "cleared" of insurgents and handed over to the Iraqi police did not stay cleared or secure past sundown of the second day. By late October, the U.S. military command in Iraq formally affixed the stamp of failure.

And now he comes before us and tells us he has ordered a futile troop buildup.

This president has been absolutely wrong about absolutely everything up to this point. What, pray tell, exists in his record that would imply he has any prayer of ever having a clue? Let alone the wisdom to extract our country from this clusterfuck?