Snafu

It's not getting any better. An editorial in The New York Times portrays the American authorities at something of a loose end:

Americans this week get another chance to take stock of President Bush’s war-without-end in Iraq. Gen. David Petraeus, the military commander in Baghdad, has already signaled his bottom line: there should be a pause in the withdrawal of American troops.
We’re not sure which specific argument the general will make: there is too much progress for American troops to leave now — or not enough. Either way, it is clear that neither he nor Mr. Bush have a strategy for ending America’s disastrous involvement in Iraq.

Meanwhile The (London) Times concludes that none of the Presidential candidates has such a strategy:

The next US president will inherit 140,000 troops in Iraq and no clear plan of what to do with them. That is the bottom line of the report that General David Petraeus is likely to present to Congress today.
He is expected to recommend a drawdown of about 20,000 troops to the level before the “surge”, and then a pause. But then what? He and Ambassador Ryan Crocker will have the same tale to tell: a year of some military success, undermined by paralysis in the Iraqi Government, which has brought Iraq no closer to a political settlement. None of the factors that has calmed the violence, such as the support of Sunni tribes or the “ceasefire” of Shia militias, can be assumed to be permanent.
And none of the “battleplans” of the three candidates gets to grips with this portrait ...

But surely Gordon and Des, the trusty men in charge of the strategy for the 4,000 British troops sitting in their airbase near Basra, know what they are doing (or what they are planning to do)? OK, they haven't yet told us, but they are not simply waiting for the Americans to make up their mind for them, are they?

What a mess.