Ken's on the right track.

Last month I took a GIS analytical course with an ESRI master, and he pointed out that nobody knows everything about it. The software guys know what it could do, but the users know what it needs to do. But even there, the military GIS folks don't know a lot about the civilian/socio-economic/engineering side, anymore than vice versa.

The issues in Iraq have always been that way--- a multi-dimensional thing that sometimes looks very different depending on where you are playing it and when. Even if one of us thought we had the whole picture (including at the top), reality has proven a very tough task master.

Like with GIS, I know, perhaps five levels of a 25 level game, and have found, through this board, other folks who know a heck of a lot about their five levels. But nobody sees the whole picture, and we all still have to wait until the historians can gradually piece it all together (along with, as Tom Ricks reminds us, some of the big parts that haven't even happened yet) in 2029.

There are not a whole lot of people involved in matters in the Middle East that think there is a magic bullet, or that the pronouncements of a politician, even the Prime Minister, may be as quixotic as to be different for each audience he meets with in a given day. Nothing new in that...

But the Iraq puzzle is still in progress, and I doubt that the final answer lies in any of the one or two layers you have discussed than in the layers I know about. Comparing notes helps, but all of us are gifted with only partial knowledge.

Maybe the real answers to the next roll of the history dice are in events in Egypt, a whole new set of issues that will arise over the Kuwaiti positions in the UN negotiations over the sanctions extension, the upcoming Iraqi SOFA vote (the requirements for which came from Grand Ayatollah Sistani's sphere), or a domestic revolution against widespread corruption and governmental ineffectiveness. I won't hold my breathe for the noble tribes to re-establish the Caliphate any time soon.

Steve