I was watching Meet the Press this weekend and Timmah had on a panel of retired generals. This one general said we definitely need more troops there for the elections to take place. But the fact that foreign troops are there is a major irritant to the general population and if we increase troop strength we have a bigger target for the terrorists to attack us. This would further irritate the population. But if we don't increase the troop strength then we risk having an illegitimate iraqi election then we fail. At the same time we cannot train enough iraqis to take our place and the ones we do train suck anyways.
His solution to the situation: nothing. Typical talking head: Pointing out the mistakes with 20/20 hindsight without offering any solutions. He could've used the one word answer, 'quagmire', and just shut his pie-hole because he had nothing else to contribute to the discussion.
This is probably the same general that said we'd have 10k deaths trying to control Baghdad.