KEY POINTS:
If the stakes in Iraq are as great as President George W. Bush says, then he needs to inject many more extra troops than the paltry 21,500 about to be deployed.
To create the so-called necessary "surge" to bring stability to Iraq he is gambling that the 21,500 additions (which include military planners as well as troops) will give his on-the-ground leaders enough personnel to flood Baghdad. And to execute the type of classic counter-insurgency operation known as "clear, hold and build" that was successfully used to drive insurgents from the northern Iraqi city of Tal Afar.
This move is urgent given the failure of Operation Forward Together to inject any semblance of peace in Iraq's capital.
The argument goes that this strategy will buy time for Iraq to cobble together a non-sectarian government that works. But that means Iraq's Prime Minister Nouri Maliki has to use the time-umbrella provided him by the Bush Administration's own 2009 expiry date to increase the size of his 140,000 strong Iraqi army, and develop home-grown security forces free of militia influences.
Unless he can do that, it's difficult to see how Iraq can assert a democratic future when the United States ultimately pulls out.
Bush's move is essentially defensive. There are no clear benchmarks to measure the success of a military operation that has already claimed 3000 US lives.
There are no signs also that Maliki is made of the right stuff to take action and imprison the Sunni insurgents and Shiite death squads that daily threaten this Middle East nation's moves towards becoming a fully fledged democracy.
But there are signs that irrespective of the brutal assaults by the exponents of sectarian violence, Iraq's economy is starting to rebound. Whether that rebound can flourish without the US adopting an all-out offensive strategy - injecting sufficient troops along the lines of what was ultimately necessary to quell sectarian violence in Kosovo - is a moot point.
In plain terms, Bush's war, as it's being waged now, looks unwinnable. Our Duty Minister Jim Anderton was speaking the truth on that score when he broke Cabinet ranks by drawing a parallel with the Vietnam War fiasco. Like Vietnam before it, Iraq has also become a quagmire.
This reality was basically admitted by the bipartisan Iraq Study Group, headed by former US Secretary of State Jim Baker, which last month recommended the White House start executing a slow but steady withdrawal from Iraq.
Baker, who served under President George Bush snr - has been brought in to tender frank and objective advice to Bush jnr after the massive anti-war verdict the US people delivered against their Republican president by installing a Democratic majority in the Congressional elections. But when the study group's 70 recommendations arrived, Bush rejected the report.
This could be portrayed as another example of the classic oedipal responses that drove the current president to reject the warnings from his father's circle of advisers (people like former National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft) not to invade Iraq in the first place.
But pulling out in the short-term was never a real option. That's where Anderton has made a misjudgment. One that is not shared by Prime Minister Helen Clark or Foreign Minister Winston Peters who are taking a more holistic approach.
It is an approach which may well have been informed by behind-the-scenes approaches to this country to help out by deploying a provincial reconstruction team to assist with nation building.
In any event moving out would simply be read as a sign of US weakness by the Shiite militias, al Qaeda, and their Iranian and Syrian sponsors, and be another step on the road towards the formation of a Middle East caliphate empire.
Instead Bush has opted for the "surge" strategy recommended by retired US General Jack Keane and military historian Frederick Kagan. Unfortunately Bush has fallen far short of the 30,000 additional troops the pair wanted deployed for an 18-month period. He has also once again opted to reject advice from his chiefs-of-staff.
Bush has staked his presidency on Iraq. His calculated gamble that the implementation of a surge strategy will win him more time from the US people to turn the Iraq war round may yet fail.
The Democrats who now run Capitol Hill are sceptical that his new plan will work. They could yet tie his hands by denying him the budget needed to fight the war, or impose conditions, as Congress has done before in Lebanon, Central America and Vietnam.
Expanding an unpopular war carries a domestic risk. The risk that Bush's obstinacy might well clear the way for the Democrats to win the next presidential election.
But has he really any option? If the Iraqi people are to have any hope of a democratic future, Bush must stay the course.
But he must also take note of Baker's recommendation to engage Iran and Syria on the diplomatic front. Failure on that score opens up a new front that the US will not win.
