Zarqawi's guerrillas this spring and summer showed themselves to be capable of mounting waves of suicide bombings and car bombings that could kill scores at a time and paralyze the Iraqi capital. Insurgents have also launched scores of attacks every day in other parts of Iraq and laid open claim this summer to cities and towns in the critical far west, despite hit-and-run offensives by U.S. forces.
The military's enemy body count numbers were inflated during the Vietnam War, making them suspect in this unpopular war, as well. But body counts don't wholly tell the story of victory or defeat. "Success" is difficult to define in Iraq.
"The problem is, I have seen no meaningful" goal posts, said Anthony Cordesman, an analyst with the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, "and a great many conflicting points" on U.S. claims to be winning against the insurgency.
While the U.S. military seems to have made some progress in parts of the west and parts of Baghdad, Cordesman said, "it isn't clear in doing so that it has really crippled any part of the insurgency."
The military has detained large numbers of Iraqis, but it isn't clear that doing so has had an impact on the insurgency.
Since 2003, U.S. forces have detained 40,000 people, twice U.S. generals' highest public estimate of the number of fighters in the insurgency. On Saturday, the Iraqi government said it had released for lack of evidence more than 500 of the 757 suspects detained in ongoing operations in the northern city of Mosul.
Many of the men detained in Tall Afar last week were rounded up on the advice of local teenagers who had stepped forward as informants, at times for what American soldiers said they suspected amounted to no more than settling local scores.
"The question is, what does victory mean? It certainly isn't the number of people we kill or detain," Cordesman said.
Struggling to regain some semblance of public approval, and fearing that members of his own party may view him as an albatross when elections roll around next year, the president may be tempted to declare victory and start bringing the troops home. A declaration of victory would be dishonest, but the return of troops is long overdue.
