Oh, too close to true to be true. Been there, done that.
Scott Ritter, a UN weapons inspector in Iraq from 1991 through 1998, writes in the International Herald Tribune that Saddam's people are winning the war. His starts with the premise that Allawi's government, installed and supported by the US, is out of touch with the people and doomed to fail, and goes on to predict that
We will suffer a decade-long nightmare that will lead to the deaths of thousands more Americans and tens of thousands of Iraqis. We will witness the creation of a viable and dangerous anti-American movement in Iraq that will one day watch as American troops unilaterally withdraw from Iraq every bit as ignominiously as Israel did from Lebanon.
They won't leave in the night, I've no fear that they might desert me. But have you
ever tried to sell one? An interesting story on how De Beers, deliberately and methodically, arranged for a diamond to be forever.
Now, it seems, forever might be a tad too optimistict, according to The Economist.