Quote Originally Posted by Rob Thornton View Post
This is one of the problems I have with what I understand about the GAO report on political benchmarks, be they good or bad, do they reflect the willingness of the people to reconcile, share, integrate, etc.
This is why I asked about the objective when I first joined this prestigious group. According to RTK:

In short, it's to win.

As per National Strategy for Victory in Iraq published November 2005. This has not changed.

Victory in Iraq is Defined in Stages
• Short term, Iraq is making steady progress in fighting terrorists, meeting political milestones, building democratic institutions, and standing up security forces.

The tactical COIN progress we're making isn't moving us toward the strategic objective. That's obviously a problem. Especially since the tactics are costing us so much in dollars and blood. Probably the best we can hope for is that AQI can't operate in Iraq. Changing the objective to, "Remove al Qaeda from Iraq" would enable us to win much quicker and cheaper than under the current objectives. Plus domestically, the majority of the population would support it.