So what are our soldiers in Iraq saying?  Is the bad guys, as Cheney said, “in its last throes?”?  Do our fighting men and women (in their ever-decreasing numbers*) see the light at the end of the tunnel?

Nope:

"I know the party line. You know, the Department of Defense, the U.S. Army, five-star generals, four-star generals, President Bush, Donald Rumsfeld: The Iraqis will be ready in whatever time period,” said 1st Lt. Kenrick Cato, 34, of Long Island, N.Y., the executive officer of McGovern’s company, who sold his share in a database firm to join the military full time after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. “But from the ground, I can say with certainty they won’t be ready before I leave. And I know I’ll be back in Iraq, probably in three or four years. And I don’t think they’ll be ready then."

* As I write this, there is a breaking story that 5 marines were killed today in a roadside bomb.  Okay, so I guess there is a light at the end of the tunnel for some marines.  Not that the folks at Fox News give much of a crap about the honored dead as individuals anymore—they stopped updating their fatality list a month ago.