Yahoo news is reporting this morning that the expected six months time period for the surge demanded by the noted Napoleonic war expert and Likud operative Fred Kagan may last longer than originally sold to the American public.

WASHINGTON – The Pentagon is laying the groundwork to extend the U.S. troop buildup in Iraq. At the same time, the administration is warning Iraqi leaders that the boost in forces could be reversed if political reconciliation is not evident by summer.

This approach underscores the central difficulty facing
President Bush. If political progress is not possible in the relatively short term, then the justification for sending thousands more U.S. troops to Baghdad — and accepting the rising U.S. combat death toll that has resulted — will disappear. That in turn would put even more pressure on Bush to yield to the Democratic-led push to wind down the war in coming months.

Normal people have been counting this as the second month of the surge escalation that Mr Kagan, who works out of the American Enterprise Institute, the primary US office of the Likud Party, but they obviously do not understand the nature of the proposal. Mr Kagan didn’t mean we would have six months to turn things around in a massive re-enforcement of troops. He meant we would have six months from when he says the six month period begins. Currently the six month period begins in June.

First, the surge escalation has not even begun yet, although it is true that approximately one-third of the necessary 21,000 have been accounted for by the recent Pentagon extension of the typical Iraq 12 month tour into a 15 month deployment, and the greater part of another third have already been deployed to Iraq. The remainder should be in place sometime in June, at which point the official surge escalation will commence. At that point we will have six months to see if the surgeescalation can work its magic and make everyone in Iraq stop fighting so that the US military can concentrate on its close horizon goals: protecting the oil that will be handed over to US Big Oil interests and stirring up some sort of military confrontation with Iran, in order to justify a nuclear attack against that country so as to make the Middle East safer for Israel.

More than half of the extra 21,500 combat troops designated for Baghdad duty have arrived; the rest are due by June. Already it is evident that putting them in the most hotly contested parts of the capital is taking a toll. An average of 22 U.S. troops have died per week in April, the highest rate so far this year.

"This is certainly a price that we're paying for this increased security," Adm. William Fallon, the senior U.S. commander in the Middle East, told a House committee Wednesday. He also said the United States does not have "a ghost of a chance" of success in Iraq unless it can create "stability and security."

If the surge escalation doesn’t work we will then revert to Plan B, which is to point out that things are getting better, and since that is proof that the surge escalation is working, we just need to add a few more troops, and wait another six months until we see final victory.

The best solution, of course, is to collect up every single walking soldier – everyone in uniform – every swinging dick of them (apologies to the ladies reading this) – including all those female soldiers, who obviously are not as above, and move them all the Iraq. NOW. AT ONCE. TODAY. That includes all the training cadres and Drill Sergeants, except a few that we’ll keep at one training base in the US. It includes every single last solitary Brigadier General and Colonel messenger boy in the Pentagon, every last Major assigned to counting paper clips each morning and ensuring they’re all facing in the same direction. Every single Captain whose job is to carry a General’s briefcase. Everybody goes.

Then, six months from now, there will be no more excuses, no more mealy-mouthed weaseling from these warmongering cowards at the White House, AEI, Weekly Standard, and Fox Noise. And then the nation can get on with repairing the damage these creatures have caused.