But they keep telling us things are just going so well...

Donald Rumsfeld's "Westmoreland Moment" ("but, we are killing so many more of them) is an example of history both repeating itself when it comes to tragic stupidity.

With the latest spike in violence in Baghdad, more U.S. troops have died since the turnover of power to an interim Iraqi government at the end of June than were killed during the U.S.-led invasion of the country in the spring of 2003...

That trend is a grim indication that, 18 months after the invasion, the fighting appears to be intensifying rather than waning. While attention has been focused largely on standoffs in Najaf and other well-publicized hotspots, an analysis of the figures shows the U.S. military has taken more casualties elsewhere, including the deaths of about 44 troops in the western province of Anbar and 10 others in the city of Samarra.

The wide geographic dispersion of the violence reflects the strength of a resurgent opposition and also frames the challenge U.S. commanders face in the coming months as the United States seeks to hold an election to establish a new Iraqi government, said military officers and defense analysts.

"The 'peace' has been bloodier than the war," said Capt. Russell Burgos, an Army reservist who recently returned from a tour of duty with an aviation regiment in Balad, Iraq. In his view, the U.S. experience in Iraq is coming to resemble Israel's painful 18-year occupation of parts of southern Lebanon.

Here is most specific, Westmoreland moment and it is rank,

Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on Tuesday summarized the fighting by noting that there has been a "spike in the casualties" not only of U.S. and Iraqi government forces but also of the insurgents, even as their opposition becomes more sophisticated. "The more aggressive the tactics of the insurgency, the greater their loss of human life," he said. Rumsfeld elaborated on that point, estimating that as many as 2,500 insurgents and criminals were killed in August.

You know Don, I'm willing to bet that considering C-130's, Artillery, and bombs dropped from planes into cities that an awful healthy share of that 2,500 were neither insurgents nor criminals.

Furthermore Don, an 18 to 1 ratio of Iraqi dead to our dead is not comforting. Donny-boy as the population of Iraq is 27 million and there are 138,000 Americans in Iraq...that is approximately a 200 to 1 ration.

The bottom-line for Iraq is simple and time-tested, and hardly related to Iran (and if you have evidence Don, which is certainly lacking, to support your Iran claim, please do us the favor this time of letting us see it).

Iraq belongs to the Iraqis, not the United States. When a population of people wants you gone...you end up leaving on their terms not yours.