I'm not sure that you want to read this.

Anthony Cordesman has a devastating critique of the Defense Department's report, "Measuring Stability in Iraq". Essentially, Cordesman says our strategy, such as it is, is just not working and probably will never work.

His section titles lay out his argument

• Fighting the wrong war in a nation of civil wars.
• Not counterinsurgency but armed nation-building
• A critical lack of US official transparency and integrity
• Failures in conciliation and governance
• Failures in security
• Failures in economic security, development and aid

The point that really gets me: "the US government has never openly discussed or analyzed its failure in not planning for stability operations or conflict termination, in creating an electoral process that polarized Iraqi politics around inexperienced sectarian and ethnic leaders and parties, and in creating a constitution that helped divide the nation without resolving any of the key issues it attempted to address."

Most of the time in life problems do not just go away. They will continue to return until they are resolved. Unless you take the time to figure out why strategy x did not resolve the problem, you are doomed to be visited with the problem over and over. This inability to admit the existence of a real problem seems to be a hallmark of our leadership.

Our leaders are afraid of the truth, afraid of facing reality. Sometimes you can get away with living in a fantasy world. Most times you can't. When will we realize we are living in a world that is changing very dramatically? How many of the people aspiring to lead this nation are even aware of the changes that are taking place?