... you've phrased the question to get the answer you want - the proper way to put it would be: In the context of pre-surge violence, disruption and general unrest, and with an unjaundiced eye peering with difficultly down the long road ahead for Iraq and the various potentialities, both positive and negative, lying in wait, can the surge be viewed as a success? The answer would clearly be a conditional yes. You on the other hand Tom have put a biased declaration in the form of a question so as to make the preordained answer seem like a fact - to wit, since Iraq is a failure according to the arbitrary criteria I choose to judge it by, how then can the surge, a necessary cause and constituent agent of this 'Iraq' and therefore fit to be judged by the same criteria, be seen as anything but a failure too?
Aristotle in his Posterior Analytics had a word for this kind of reasoning - 'bullshit' I believe he called it.
