The non-partisan, global intelligence service Stratfor.com recently wrote,

On a strategic level, the United States has been the victor since the Sept. 11 attacks. Yet strategic victories can be undermined by massive tactical failures, and this is what the United States is facing now. Iraq is a single campaign in a much broader war. However, as frequently occurs in wars, unintended consequences dominate the battlefield. The United States intended to occupy Iraq and move on to other campaigns -- but failures in planning, underestimation of the enemy and command failures have turned strategic victory into a tactical nightmare. That tactical nightmare is now threatening to undermine not only the Iraqi theater of operations, but also the entire American war effort. It is threatening to reverse a series of al Qaeda defeats. If the current trend continues, the tactical situation will undermine U.S. strategy in Iraq, and the collapse of U.S. strategy in Iraq could unravel the entire U.S. strategy against al Qaeda and the Islamists.
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The issue is this: Iraq has not gone as planned by any stretch of the imagination. If the failures of Iraq are not rectified quickly, the entire U.S. strategic position could unravel. Speed is of the essence. There is no longer time left.
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It is our job to identify emerging trends, and we have, frequently, been accused of everything from being owned by the Republicans to being Iraq campaign apologists. In fact, we are making a non-partisan point: The administration is painting itself into a corner that will cost Bush the presidency if it does not deal with the fact that there is no one who doesn't know that Iraq has been mismanaged. The administration's only option for survival is to start managing it effectively, if that can be done at this point.