A doomed marriage

There's been a real shift in the last few days. People that are well placed to know are coming out and saying that the mission here is not working. There are two schools of thought. One (which I believe) is that the US and UK are going to have to get out of here soon and leave the Iraqis to sort their country out with assistance from Syria and Iran. The other is that the US will have to bring extra troops in and try to retake Baghdad. I don't see how that can happen. There's no way I can see that we can stay until we hand over security to the Iraqis. We'd be here forever. I hate to say it, but they are in many cases lazy and corrupt. Everyone is on the take here. For foreign companies to get licences to run security companies they have to first pay tax and social security in respect of their Iraqi employees. There's two ways of doing this: 1. Pay what you're supposed to by reference to the salaries you've got in the company accounts or 2. Pay an official at the Tax authorities a bribe and get them to lower the amount payable. This is how business is done in Iraq. This video is an example of how the security transfer is going. It's just not plausible for us to stay "until the job is done". It sounds as if Bush is starting to accept this at last.