Surgitude

Bobo:

But before long, the more honest among the surge opponents will concede that Bush, that supposed dolt, actually got one right. Some brave souls might even concede that if the U.S. had withdrawn in the depths of the chaos, the world would be in worse shape today.

Reality:

The administration lacks an updated and comprehensive Iraq strategy to move beyond the "surge" of combat troops President Bush launched in January 2007 as an 18-month effort to curtail violence and build Iraqi democracy, government investigators said yesterday.

While agreeing with the administration that violence has decreased sharply, a report released yesterday by the Government Accountability Office concluded that many other goals Bush outlined a year and a half ago in the "New Way Forward" strategy remain unmet.

The report, after a bleak GAO assessment last summer, cited little improvement in the ability of the Iraqi security forces to act independently of the U.S. military, and noted that key legislation passed by the Iraqi parliament had not been implemented while other crucial laws had not been passed. The report also judged that key Iraqi ministries spent less of their allocated budgets last year than in previous years, and said that oil and electricity production had repeatedly not met U.S. targets.

Bush's strategy of January 2007, the GAO said, "defined the original goals and objectives that the Administration believed were achievable by the end of this phase in July 2008." Not meeting many of them changed circumstances on the ground and the pending withdrawal of the last of the additional U.S. forces mean that strategy is now outdated, the report said. The GAO recommends that the State and Defense departments work together to fashion a new approach.

More reality:

BAGHDAD, June 24 -- Two U.S. soldiers and two American civilians working for the U.S. government were killed in an explosion Tuesday morning in Sadr City, a vast Shiite slum where security had improved dramatically in recent weeks, U.S. officials said.

The blast occurred at about 9:20 a.m. inside a government building.

Still more:

BAGHDAD — A security guard for an Iraqi politician grabbed his Kalashnikov automatic rifle and opened fire on at least a half-dozen American soldiers, killing two of them, during a meeting with Iraqi officials in a village southeast of Baghdad on Monday, an Iraqi Interior Ministry official said.

The number of casualties was in dispute. The American military command in Baghdad said that two American soldiers had been killed and that three others and an interpreter had been wounded. The Interior Ministry official said that in addition to the two soldiers who had been killed, at least six other soldiers had been wounded. The gunman was killed in the firefight.

According to the Interior Ministry official, the attack took place as American soldiers were attending the opening of a park in Madaen, a village along the Tigris River about 20 miles from Baghdad. Madaen was the scene of horrific sectarian violence between Sunni and Shiite gangs in the years after the American invasion in 2003. The official described the attacker as a security guard for a member of the provincial council.

Missionless accomplished.