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Compiled by Adam ChristianUpdated Thursday, Feb. 8, 2007, at 2:26 PM ET

(Continued from page 7)

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In place of concrete, measurable benchmarks of progress, the Bush strategy has been one of perpetual deferral, claims O_Hellenbach:

My particular favorite line in the administration's ongoing obfuscation and denial about the situation in Iraq is the one that goes, "the next three [or six] months will be critical." The idea that something is critical means that at the end of the period some kind of resolution has been reached, or some kind of result will occur or not occur that will allow somebody to make some kind of judgment about it. Yet it never does. The phrase simply becomes a way to put off answering any questions. Since the occupation began, we've passed any number of supposed critical three-month periods without comment or even any memory that somebody said that the critical period had passed--much less with any resolution or conclusion or evaluation.

Varian fires back forcefully at O_Hellenbach's "Are we there yet?" approach that

represents ... all the impatient, largely irrelevant questions which should be answered in [times of] war: "as long as it takes." You've bought into your own antiwar propaganda to an extent that you don't realize that people like Hitch think that friendly control over the key state in the Mideast and hanging what may be an insurmountable defeat on the jihadists is well worth a few years and a few thousand troops (as much as we regret the loss of each one). That's what some of us commit to when we support a war. We don't expect every war to be a 6-week air campaign followed by 100 hours of ground fighting before we declare "victory."

The above is but an excerpt of the fiery volley between O_H and V. The full version can be found in the Fighting Words Fray. AC … 4:27pm PT