Tom Friedman Speaketh

At McSweeney's, "Thomas Friedman Explains the Issues of the Day":

The Situation in Iraq

It's clear we've entered a new and critical phase in the Iraq war. We can still win this thing, but only if we carefully read the signals coming from the Sunni, Shiite, and Kurdish factions, and tailor a response that promotes our strategic interests.

This is where I fault the Bush administration. It seems the administration never understood the divergent interests of Iraq's political players, and compounded that error by pursuing an ideological fantasy at odds with real-world geopolitics. It's even possible to argue—and I stress "possible"—that the invasion itself was a monumental and unsalvageable foreign-policy catastrophe.

But whoa, let's not get ahead of ourselves. There's still time to pull this one out. It just depends on those in power doing absolutely the right thing based on the information they have, taking into account our interests, and the interests of others in the region. I can't put it any more clearly than that.