• Rumsfeld's eagerness to use Iraq as a test bed for his transformation of the military was a disaster. While the US handled stage one capably, his indifferent to disorder set the stage for stage two.



• Leaving open the ammo dumps set the bed for the resistance. The Iraqi resistance is the most lavishly equipped in history. Every unit well armed with modern weapons.



• Poor planning left the US without their Third World auxillary armies to provide basic security. Without the large Pakistani and Nigerian units to patrol towns and provide basic area denial, US units have had to do two jobs, security and quick reaction.



• Disbanding the Army set the stage for the resistance to have trained people running it. These men didn't learn war from textbooks. The senior folks learned in combat and passed those lessons down



• US forces have adapted to tactics only to have those tactics shift.



• The Iraqis have minimized the use of helicopter units and limited them to observation and attack.



• The Iraqi resistance has also limited the use of the roadnet. Without convoys, resupply is impposible. This control is so dominant that US units now get some supplies by air.



• They have also thoroughly penetrated US assets in Iraq. No Iraqi unit can move without the guerrilas eventually finding out.



• US units are unable to leave their bases except on patrol. During the Vietnam War, Americans could frequent bars and live in the cities. No American can live in Iraq without security at the risk of kidnapping and death.



• The lack of infantry leaves the US unable to sustain military successes when they do occur. The scarest military resource is not armor, but trained combat infantry. Sure, you can send artillerymen out on patrol and get tankers on foot. But infantry is irreplacable for guerrilla warfare.
  
  Every day, US forces go out, take casualities and go back to their bases, trying to survive yet another attack that night. The US, in two years, have lost lives and material, but gained little. There is not one area the US can say that guerrillas cannot operate. And that is the most important fact. After two years and 1500 dead, the guerrillas control the highway to the airport, Baghdad's main drags and the country's highways.
  
  This is not winning.

I've got nothing to add, and so what that this is pretty much the exact same post that dKos put up about it -- this is important stuff, and the more it gets around, the better. And don't just read the conclusions I've presented here, look at the entire piece to see the evidence he gives to support them.

Gilliard was one of the more perceptive commentators prior to the war (despite that I occasionally disagreed with him), and he shows here the same ability to see things clearly.

Postscript: The real question here is not if we're winning in Iraq, the real question is how does an accurate assessment of the state of play (whatever it may be at the moment) get through to the American public, when the media either can't or won't report it (or both), the right-wing media apparatus is in full-scale denial, and the lefty blogosphere and other media outlets, either liberal (Air America) or objective (Frontline), have a very limited impact?

The very sad answer is that it's probably going to take a straight-forward large-scale disaster that cannot be ignored by the media to shock the public out of its torpor and shake them into the realization that things are in very bad shape.

In other words, more Americans will die.