-- "The United States is clearly in the end game in Iraq to successfully achieve what should be our principal objectives:
-- The withdrawal of the majority of our ground combat forces in the coming 36 months,
-- Leaving behind an operative civil state and effective Iraqi security forces,
-- An Iraqi state not in open civil war among Shia, Sunnis, and Kurds,
-- An Iraqi nation not at war with its six neighboring states."

-- The past 18 months have witnessed a dramatic, positive change.
-- Iranian intervention is relentless but has to a great extent alienated the southern Iraqi Shia and been largely ineffective.
-- The Maliki government remains largely dysfunctional in its ability to deliver services to the population.
-- It is almost the case that an Iraqi government in the classic sense does not exist. The glue that holds Iraq together is the U.S. Armed Forces, the U.S. Embassy team, tribal leadership, and the Iraqi Army.

So let's remove the U.S. armed forces and dissolve the glue ...

-- The Sons of Iraq Movement has absorbed more than 100,000 Sunni insurgent fighters and brought them into a neighborhood watch program which has successfully confronted the remnants of the insurgency.