This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Monday, September 24th, 2007.

I'm Caleb Brown.

How is President Bush's War in Iraq Progressing?

Mark Lynch, a professor of political science at

George Washington University, argues that with millions of Iraqis displaced,

the war has created a constituency for insurgents. We spoke following the Cato Institute forum

assessing the surge. It was held September 20th 2007. The report of David Petraeus

seemed to be a highlight reel that refused to show the scoreboard despite some daring acrobatics.

You say that he views the battlefield as something larger than just Iraq?

Well, I think it's been pretty clear that General Petraeus, his understanding of

counterinsurgency, is one in which American public opinion is one of the most important

battlefields that you can't fight an insurgency if you don't have the support of

the home front. So I think he's really made a great effort to orient a lot of his strategy towards convincing

public opinion.

I think that this doesn't begin in September.

It goes back quite a ways.

There's a reason why he has so much time

for visiting senators and visiting congressmen

and visiting journalists and why there's

been so much effort to cultivate journalists

and to show them the on bar success stories and things like that.

So I think that what we saw in September and with the Petraeus Crocker report is the culmination of a process of domestic

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