We’ve been told that yes, Iraq is a mixed bag but we’re finally making some progress. Well guess what.

The war has come up in debates, but in a rather perfunctory way: so far, it’s been anything but the defining issue of the campaign season. I am the millionth person to make this observation. And any night of the week you can hear Fox newscasters crowing: “The reason the war isn’t coming up is because the surge is working!”

Well, the guys at the RAND Corporation excel at creating ulcers and raining on parades. The Pentagon recently commissioned a report card from RAND, and the results bear little resemblance to the “rocky start but we’re on the right track” narrative:

“The report finds that large-scale U.S. military intervention and occupation in the Muslim world is at best inadequate, at worst counter-productive, and, on the whole, infeasible.”

and

“It would be a profound mistake to conclude…that all the United States needs is more military force to defeat Islamist insurgencies. One need only contemplate the precarious condition of Pakistan to realize the limitations of U.S. military power and the peril of relying upon it.”

Tags: impotent rage, insurgency, iraq, Pentagon, Rachel Powers, RAND, War