We stand up so the Iraqis can sit down?

According to Jack Keane, primary military author of the current Bush strategy in Iraq, the Iraqi forces have been benched.

In another part of Iraq, an emissary for the U.S. commander in Iraq also delivered a sobering assessment of what it would take to defeat insurgents.

Retired Army Gen. Jack Keane, a top Pentagon envoy touring areas northeast of Baghdad, said the security clampdown in the capital has pushed militants out of the capital. But he conceded there weren't "enough forces to secure the population" and said Iraqis are not ready to handle the battle alone.

He was the latest official to outline the Pentagon's new approach: Instead of training Iraqi forces to take over national security on a fast-track timetable, U.S. forces plan to throw more troops at the resourceful and adaptable insurgents.

"The violence is too high," said Keane, who was sent on a fact-finding mission by Gen. David Petraeus, the new commander of U.S. forces in Iraq. "So our new strategy is to bring the violence down so Iraqi forces can deal with it."

So, in the words of its own author, the current plan has abandoned all pretense of Iraqi forces and "Iraqis in the lead."

We're back at the beginning, only this time the battle space is so much worse.