Victory in Iraq is their defeat in '08 and they know it.
Exactly.
"Victory in Iraq is their defeat in '08 and they know it."
If "victory" means "winning", the only way to do this is to establish something akin to Kemalism and viciously put down the "insurgents". That means tossing the current Iraqi constitution as the first step.
Last I heard, Abizaid (I think it was him) had defined "victory" to be an "acceptable level of violence".