A debate is raging in Washington about whether the so-called surge of US forces in Iraq is likely to work.
Tension is growing between the political pressure to get results and the military imperative to give the plan time.
The critics include not only Democrats but Republican Senator Richard Lugar, who said in a speech on 25 June that the prospects that the surge strategy would succeed in the way envisaged by President Bush were "very limited"...
On the other side are proponents like commentator Frederick W Kagan of the American Enterprise Institute, one of those who first proposed the plan.
He has written in the Weekly Standard magazine that Operation Phantom Thunder, as the operational phase of the surge is known, "is so far proceeding very well"...
Informing the debate is a key article in the Small Wars Journal, a discussion forum founded by former members of the US Marine Corps.
On the site's weblog, the Senior Counterinsurgency Adviser in Iraq, David Kilcullen, an Australian expert, has written about how the plan is supposed to work. He withholds judgment on whether it is succeeding or will do so. On that, he simply observes: "Time will tell."
He points out that major operations in Baghdad and the surrounding provinces started only on 15 June. "This is the end of the beginning: we are now starting to put things onto a viable long-term footing," he said...
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