yes, it is pretty dismal all the way around. but it was from the beginning.
i tend to agree that they'll maneuver a way out of afghanistan by the end of the year. the quagmire issue isn't new--everyone was predicting that it'd be a mess in the first place. further, i suspect that PapaBush learned something important last round: if you play up the difficulty of the mission, then people will be happy with quite a lot less than otherwise.
my question though: they're going to have to have something demonstrable in order to effectively declare victory, no? no dead ObL and no decapitated Taliban ... what could they declare victory about? or do you think people are sufficiently happy with dropping a few bombs and will leave it at that, as long as there's some media furor over something else to distract people from the issues? even if shrub pulls out without much of a victory, i don't think he'll suffer in the polls solely because of that issue. and, further, he's got his bases covered since they keep reminding everyone that, even if we pull out of afghanistan--in terms of dropping bombs--they'll be engaged in covert ops and other less-than-spectacular actions. the war won't end, just one phase of the war plan, iow.
my guess is that they may well step up the homeland defense component of this "war" so they can justify their actions--which is why i think that blaming anthrax mail on the rightwing was disinfo designed to allow them to shift gears if they needed to.
kelley