Remember. Up Is Down

How's this for setting the table in a favorable way to the administration:

BAGHDAD, Iraq - The U.S. military announced the deaths of 11 U.S. soldiers killed in combat along with an embedded journalist Sunday, and Iraqi officials said 163 civilians were killed or injured across the country.

But still more carnage is likely over the next three months as additional U.S. forces arrive in Baghdad under President Bush's troop "surge" because "we're taking the fight to the enemy," a top U.S. military commander warned.

So let's review the bidding. We have more troops in Iraq. If we're "successful" our military leaders are predicting that it will be evidenced by more dead soldiers. Yes, indeed. Taking the "fight to the enemy" will result in more death. But isn't this the essence of the entire error of the plan? And just how are we going to be measuring success if not via the key measure, less violence? Is success going to be the ability of Paetraus to walk down a street with a full military escort without being attacked?

The conservative approach is simple minded, clumsy and stupid .... to take a problem and to beat it to death. The miscalculation is that there is an unending supply of "enemy" in Iraq. Until there is a solution that stops the flow of new enemy, the status quo can only be maintained by a similar unending flow of new soldiers. And trust me on this, we are no where even close to stopping the flow of new insurgents.