Hagel: No military solution in Iraq

In an op-ed this morning in the Des Moines Register, Senator Senator Chuck Hagel (R-NE) took issue with the Administration's blurry reality of who we are fighting in Iraq:

We must start by understanding what's really happening in Iraq.According to the National Intelligence Estimate released in February,the conflict has become a "self-sustaining inter-sectarian strugglebetween Shia and Sunnis" and also includes "extensive Shia-on-Shiaviolence." This means that Iraq is being consumed by sectarian warfare,much of it driven by Shiite or Sunni militias - not al-Qaidaterrorists. Yes, there are admirers of Osama bin Laden in the country,including a full-blown al-Qaida branch. But terrorists are not the coreproblem; Sunni-Shiite violence is. The Bush administration's rhetorichas not been nearly clear enough on this key point.

American occupation cannot stop a civil war in Iraq. Our military,superb as it is, can only do so much. The only lasting answer to Iraq'sanguish will come from a political resolution. There will be nomilitary solution in Iraq.

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This pretty much erases the notion that we are fighting the terrorists in Iraq so we don't fight them here.  We are talking about a sectarian civil war.  They are fighting one another and anyone else that occupies their land.  They have lived there for a millennium.  Does the Administration really think that these locals will just drop everything and travel to the U.S. to harm us?

Either the Administration is in a state of denial or, more likely, they are in a state of active deception.