Can the US achieve the outcome in Iraq that the Cheney administration wants? To answer this, we first need to be able to answer: What do they want?
As far as we know:
- 14 permanent bases
- A strong, secular democratic government friendly to western business interests
- A stable country that is capable of providing security within its borders
- Control of Iraqi oil (or at least priority access)
- For war contractors be able to spend every dollar allocated by congress
So, on what timescale are these goals achievable?
The constitution, if ratified "as is", will likely cause civil war. It certainly won't cause the insurgency to stand down. There's also the small matter of the rollback of human rights it represents, and the move towards an Islamic state. It's nominally democratic, but doesn't recognize the interests of the Sunni minority. If it fails, the assembly will be dissolved and they'll need to start over, pushing back timetables and likely causing even more turmoil. Number two is not going to happen for a very long time.
The Iraqi military and police force can't provide security. Our 130,000 troops can't provide security. We could secure the country with more soldiers, but we don't have more soldiers and there won't be a draft. If the best trained and equipped military in the world can't provide security, there's no way we're going to be able to train the Iraqis to do so. Add to this fact that many Iraqi military and police are members of militia groups which have their primary loyalty, and the chances of a secure Iraq plummet even further. Number three is also not going to happen anytime soon.
That leaves one, four, and five. Numbers one and four are unlikely. Bases are fixed targets, and would continue to fuel insurgent attacks. The green zone government might be friendly to us, but they won't actually be running the country, so their guarantees are worthless in terms of access to resources requiring physical infrastructure.
That only leaves number five. Logically, this is the only reason Americans continue to die in Iraq. We will leave Iraq when the US corporations fattening on the war trough have sucked it dry, and our elected representatives refuse to allocate more money.
The military-industrial complex will need to come back to them and ask for more money, and the house and senate need to be ready to say NO.
This is why the congressional and senate war hawks, especially the democrats (with whom we nominally have more pull), need to be persuaded as quickly as possible to admit error and start an honest opposition. If we keep pouring money down this hole in a war we're not willing to give ourselves a chance to win (it's unclear winning is possible, but that point is really irrelevant since we're not willing to try), the real reason we're there will continue, and even more mothers will never see their sons and daughters again.