Harry Reid has also acknowledged the situation in Iraq is a civil war.

This isn't just anti-Bush negativism. This needs to be acknowledged, sticking our heads in the sand about Iraq has helped nothing. Part of the reason this entire endeavor has been such a failure has been the failure of leadership to recognize problems and potential problems from the start.

Now, we acknowledge the problem is a civil war. The current model has failed. We can either move in more troops to stabilize the situation, but this would ultimately be futile since we are doing nothing to alleviate the underlying conditions leading to the violence. Ultimately we have to be considering more drastic ideas. Possibly the division of Iraq into more than one state, rather than trying to force arbitrary linear borders defined by imperialists a century ago. The downside being, whatever segment becomes Shiite will naturally ally with Iran, and the equitable division of natural resources. Alternatively, consider a longer transition to democracy, with international peacekeeping and executive management of government until peace is restored. Simply put, a parliamentary democracy will do nothing to stop a civil war, democracy doesn't work in such situations, it certainly didn't stop our own civil war.

No matter what, once the reality is acknowledged maybe we'll be able to take the drastic steps necessary to fix the mess we've made. I can't help but feel this is hopeless though, I think we lost the war in the first week when we sent the Iraqi army home and failed to prevent mass looting and lawlessness. We never recovered from that error. Ultimately we may have to withdraw and let them fight it out, it's certainly not going to be helped to having us stand in the crossfire, especially when we don't have to troops present to maintain peace between the factions.