Don,

Thanks for the well considered post.

I will disagree on one item....not a point of fact, but a forecast. You noted:

"I'm quite certain he won't give much credit to Gen. Patraeus (and definitely not to President Bush). Maybe the Iraqis themselves are "mostly" responsible for improvements (slight as they might be). At any rate, justification for changing this position will be very interesting.'

I might expect Obama to give considerable credit and praise to Patraeus under the following premise.

One of the interesting things Bush did was to essentially abdicate an impression of ownership of the mission and objective over to Petraeus....baiting the hard left (Move.On) to fall into the trap of drawing an inappropriate criticism of Patraeus when the mission was the actual point of contention.

One might say that Patraeus was a willing participant in this obfuscation, but it's not clear what options he may have had within his circumstances.

What I believe Obama will, and should do is to clarify for the public the lines of demarcation between who sets the objective....and who develops the tactics for carrying this out.

He will praise the General for a job well done, and task him with developing a strategy and plan for an orderly conclusion to our occupation of Iraq.