Or at least 10 years:

When Rep. Jan Schakowsky made her first trip to Iraq this month, the outspoken antiwar liberal resolved to keep her opinions to herself. "I would listen and learn," she decided.

And learn she did:

At times that proved a challenge, as when Deputy Prime Minister Barham Salih told her congressional delegation, "There's not going to be political reconciliation by this September; there's not going to be political reconciliation by next September." Schakowsky gulped -- wasn't that the whole idea of President Bush's troop increase, to buy time for that political progress?

Silly. The idea was to make another Friedman Unit's worth of war profits. And that will be the idea for the next F.U., and the next F.U., and the next, and the next....

Petraeus cautioned that it could take another decade before real stability is at hand. Schakowsky gasped. "I come from an environment where people talk nine to 10 months," she said, referring to the time frame for withdrawal that many Democrats are advocating. "And there he was, talking nine to 10 years."

But the military presentations left her stunned. Schakowsky said she jotted down Petraeus's words in a small white notebook she had brought along to record her impressions. Her neat, looping handwriting filled page after page, and she flipped through to find the Petraeus section. " 'We will be in Iraq in some way for nine to 10 years,' " Schakowsky read carefully. She had added her own translation: "Keep the train running for a few months, and then stretch it out. Just enough progress to justify more time."

Schakowsky gets it. Kudos to here.

Yep. If the Beltway Consensus holds, we're in there for as long as the money holds out. Good to know.

Say, I wonder whether the report Bush is going to have General Petraeus's name signed to in September will reflect this plan, or not?

NOTE Nice little vignettes the tools of the propaganda trade:

Gen. David H. Petraeus, who used charts and a laser pointer to show how security conditions were gradually improving .... when Petraeus and U.S. Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker travel to Washington to testify before Congress, presumably with similar charts and arguments ... She lost track of all the PowerPoint presentations that she and her colleagues sat through -- it was either five or six. "You would get these organizational charts that were all acronyms -- I mean like, 30 of them," Schakowsky recalled with a laugh. "And the danger of asking a question about them is it would add another 10 minutes" to the presentation.

It's all crap. The chain of command is deliberately confused and the accountability obfuscated so the lying and looting--the real purpose of the endeavor--can continue unabated. Smedley Butler, thou shouldst be with us in this hour...