More wheat, huh? Hmmm, you are right, that didn't get circulated. The fact that school attendance for children has dropped from 70% to 30% did, and the fact that there are 2 million internally displaced/refugees. I don't think I'll buy that Iraq is anything other than a complete mess.
I referenced the Tet Offensive because while the body count was (as always) in our favor, it served it's political purpose. I mean, the VC did not really think they could hold the U.S. embassy in Saigon, for example, they just knew it would play great on film. Not liking the rules of the game doesn't make it not so. Not liking that Americans have no stomache for long, drawn out wars doesn't make it not so. This is the reality we are faced with, so decisions have to be made in the light of reality. I have coworkers who go around to this day saying, "But we WON the Tet Offensive!" and totally not understanding that's beside the point.
In 2005, Cheney said we were seeing the last death throes of the insurgency, about every six months for the last 4 years we've been told it's just about to end. That was a huge mistake. The only slim hope for not having Iraq revert to a dictatorship after an ethnic bloodletting is for us to be there another decade, possibly longer, with many more troops than we have there now. No one is willing to do that, so what do we gain with half measures, like 20k troops to attempt to quell millions of Iraqis?