Kissinger gives up on victory in Iraq

In Woodward's latest book, there was the much discussed reappearance of Henry Kissinger as one of Bush's top outside advisors. The Woodward book states that Kissinger's advice to Bush was approximately this from an Aug. 2005 Kissinger editorial, "Victory over the insurgency is the only meaningful exit strategy."

So, imagine my surprise this morning,

Military victory is no longer possible in Iraq, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger said in a television interview broadcast Sunday.....

"If you mean by 'military victory' an Iraqi Government that can be established and whose writ runs across the whole country, that gets the civil war under control and sectarian violence under control in a time period that the political processes of the democracies will support, I don't believe that is possible," he said on the BBC's Sunday AM breakfast show.

Carefully parsing what he's saying, it seems to be a much more nuanced version of Bush's "we only lose if we quit," laying out the argument that "democracies" (US, UK) will give up in less time than it would take the Iraqis to build a functioning government.

(It's the public's fault that a semi-functional government in Iraq grows farther and farther away.)

Even with this questionable interpretation as to cause, it is still quite notable that Kissinger has moved to the victory "is not possible" camp.