Even the soldiers in Iraq think the surge will fail.

“To be honest, it’s going to be like this for a long time to come, no matter what we do,” said Hardy, 25, of Atlanta. “I think some people in America don’t want to know about all this violence, about all the killings. The people back home are shielded from it; they get it sugar-coated.”

Heck, even proponents of the surge don’t think it stands much of a chance!

The success of the Bush administration’s new Iraq strategy depends on a series of rapid and dramatic political and economic reforms that even the plan’s authors have little confidence will work.

In the current go-for-broke atmosphere, administration officials say they are aware that failure to achieve the reforms would result in a repeat of last year’s unsuccessful Baghdad offensive, when efforts to consolidate military gains with lasting stability on the ground did not work. This time, they acknowledge, there will be no second chance.

I’m sorry but the president has failed to convince…well anyone who has any brain at all that this additional influx of troops is worth the price of their lives. Is it? It sure as hell doesn’t look like it.