That's funny, the American people have known for some time that our current administration is also "Unable to Govern Effectively". Now we know why Bush seems to feel the need to defend his equally incompetent Iraqi counterpart, they're in the same boat.

Tom G: you've said it all. Most intelligent comment I've seen on all the blogs for a long time.

Now does anyone really expect Bush to read this report...the man doesn't read period.

Duh! If you setup puppets this is what is going to happen. You don't like real leaders or else they become too independent and do not give oil contracts to American (Cheney favored ) companies.

This isn't news. Cheney knew this in "94". So why did he push for us to go to war. His company made big profits off of it, and screwed us in the process

Like they are telling us something new... It is just now that it is politically expedient to blame Iraqi leadership so that withdrawal won't seem like retreat. And yes, we will meet Mr. Maliki again in 10-15 yrs when he is just another little petty tyrant that we want to overthrow. Kinda like Sadam Hussein.

I wonder if Hillary will read this NIE??

Now why would ABCNEWS.com not mention this portion of the report: "We assess that changing the mission of coalition forces from a primarily counterinsurgency and stabilization role to a primary combat support role for Iraqi forces and counterterrorist operations to prevent AQI (Al-Qaeda in Iraq) from establishing a safe haven would erode security gains achieved thus far," the report states." Could it be that it shows that the Democrat strategy would be counter-productive? Could it be that this news site does'nt want you to be able to make up your mind, that ABCNEWs knows what's good for you?

Saddam Hussein; Osama bin Laden; The CIA; the "raw intel": Democrats; Congress; the Shi'ites; the Sunnis; the Iranians; Cindy Sheehan; Joe WIlson and Valerie Plame; Bill Clinton; The Iraq Study Group; the elected Iraqi government... ...looks like its everyone's fault except the people that put us there.

Must be a typo. This sounds like a SUMMARY OF THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION!

These people need to stop playing the blame game and get something done. Instead of making these reports to restate the problems that we already know exist they could be fixing them instead.

"Be part of the solution, not the problem"

Oh yeah more of the Blame the Iraqi's for the tragedy in Iraq. The right wing radicals were after chaos and destruction in Iraq. They are right on course...next stop Iran if it is up to these arrogant narcissistic socio-paths.

I know that none of you left wing partisans care, but ABC butchered what the full report said in typical pseudo-journalistic fashion. No need to read the whole report.. just let a journalist tell you what it says.

I see that most of you jerks skipped reading the story and just started posting. The report actually has some good news in it but you wouldn't know that because you only read the headline. Good Job!

Actually, i have read the NIE, all that has been declassified of course, and of course it says nothing new, military gains have been made, especially in the SURGE reinforced areas, but AQI have been relocating to the north where the troop presense isnt so great. As for political gains, there will not be any as long as the current puppet regime is in place. Watch Bill Moyers "the secret government". Iraq and its government are just one more facet of America's failed policies at instituting new governments in foreign countries (reference Nicaragua, Panama,etc...)
My father is a Vietnam veteran, and im sure he knows more than Bush will ever know about warfare. He told me last night that he laughed out loud when bush compared Iraq to Vietnam, and my fatyher even VOTED for him in 00 and 04....Now thats BAD,,,,

They resemble our guys in government. Regardless of the party. I think we were successful from that standpoint.

In my opinion the UN ought to assist more in the Middle East, after all, all nations benefit from a stable government where they do primary business. The UN ought move fast on developing new market export for the many small Iraqi merchant in textile, art, etc. this takes away from terrorism buildup and restart self-esteem. The United States and our allies should not be pulling all of this load, and this problem should have been undertaken years ago. I think terrorism could have been defeated by simpler means but for some reason no one in the political, social, religious influences undertook that chore. I support president Bush our troops and allies, and hopefully the termination of terrorism.

perhaps the government of iraq would be able to "govern" if they weren't on hiatus while our soldiers are getting shot every freaking day. if we didn't have a lobotomized leader ourselves we'd have them be accountable for their own success. oh that's right, we have as our president who holds NO ONE accountable! Katrina (i like how we're pledging money to Mexico for the recent hurricane when N.O. is still in shambles), Walter Reed, Harriet Miers, Scooter, George "Medal of Freedome/Ineptitude" Tenet...the list goes on...

comparing Vietnam to Iraq, makes me think of the tens of thousands of US soldier's lives that would have been lost, if we hadn't pulled out when we did and stayed fighting in that quagmire...a decade after leaving Vietnam, free market economic reforms were instituted and 30 years later Vietnam is now a player in the global economy...and that region wasn't destabilized...we need to get out of the business of nation building and mediating a civil war, which has nothing to do with fighting terrorism...one could argue that Saddam's regeme, though brutal, was contained and stable with the minimal cost of maintaining the no-fly zone...if we could tolerate a Castro for four decades, we could have tolerated Saddam...

We need to get our troops out and we need to put a lot of planning into how we will do that. Of course, no one in the Bush administration cares about plans that would help our soldiers or the Iraqis. They just want to continue the chaos so they can continue to steal. How many billions do they need, anyway?