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Wow.

First Bush lost Tony Blair, then he lost Henry "we only lost in Vietnam because we lost our will at home" Kissinger.

ThinkProgress has the video with Blair. The Washington Post has the interview with Kissinger:

LONDON -- Military victory is no longer possible in Iraq, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger said in a television interview broadcast Sunday.

Kissinger presented a bleak vision of Iraq, saying the U.S. government must enter into dialogue with Iraq's regional neighbors _ including Iran _ if progress is to be made in the region.

"If you mean by 'military victory' an Iraqi government that can be established and whose writ runs across the whole country, that gets the civil war under control and sectarian violence under control in a time period that the political processes of the democracies will support, I don't believe that is possible," he told the British Broadcasting Corp.

Meanwhile, this morning on the Sunday talk shows, McCain was forced to admit that his plan to send more troops to the region would would "put a terrible strain on the Army and Marine Corps." To which Fareed Zakaria provides a pitch perfect response: the problem in IRaq isn't a military one; it's political.

And meanwhile... in the White House? Onward christian soldiers, marching as to war. Brilliant!

UPDATE: Andrew Sullivan is right. Today's NYT article is a perfect illustration of just how hopeful this situation has become. An excerpt:

The Iraqi policemen begged the Americans not to make them go out. They peeled off their clothes to reveal shrapnel scars from past attacks. They tugged the armored plates from their Kevlar vests and told the Americans they were faulty. They said they had no fuel for their vehicles. They disappeared on indefinite errands elsewhere in the compound. They said they would not patrol if it meant passing a trash pile, a common hiding place for bombs.

The Iraqis eventually gave up and climbed into two S.U.V.’s with shattered windshields and missing side windows, and the joint patrol moved out. One Iraqi officer draped his Kevlar vest from the window of his car door for lateral protection. During a lunch break, the officers tried to sneak away in their cars.

Later in the day, back at her command center on a military base in southern Baghdad, Captain Bagley said the pleading and excuses were common. But she did not blame the Iraqis. They are soft targets for the insurgency, and scores of officers have been wounded or killed in her area during the past year. The police stations’ motor pools are so crowded with ravaged vehicles that they could be taken for salvage yards.

“I’d never want to go out in an Iraqi police truck,” the captain said. “But we still have to convince them. We’ve been given a job to train them.” But she also points out that her orders were to help train and equip a local force to deal with common crime, like theft and murder, not teach infantry skills to wage a counterinsurgency campaign.

For those who knew anything about Iraq prior to the invasion, none of this should be particularly surprising. Think back to the Desert Storm, for example. Remember how tens of thousands of Iraqis surrendered immediately? How they preferred to flee rather than fight? Most ignorant Americans chalked that up to our overwhelming military superiority. No doubt that played an important part. But equally critical was the fact that, with the exception of the elite, most Iraqis don't see themselves as Iraqis. Their loyalty is to their family, their clan, their tribe, and their region, not the country. Iraq, after all, was an artificial creation of the West, a set of boundaries and borders imposed by the British in the first half of the 20th century with no consideration for the will of the people. Why on earth would you expect someone to be willing to die for that?

Know your history, people. Know your history...

UPDATE: Josh Marshall points out a possible alternate reading of that Kissinger quote. I agree with him, nut only up to a point. Yes, Kissinger was trying once again to make the case that political will is the key to victory. But unless he has completely lost it (which, I suppose, presumes he had it at some point, a dubious assumption), he had to know that a statement like this would be read to indicate that it was simply too late. He had to know, in other words, that making a statement like this would only accelerate the process of losing will. Which means, I think, that the statement may be a bit more complex than Josh has recognized.

Or maybe Kissinger is, after all these years, still a little bit nuts.