They arrived on the heels of the Maliki debacle in Basra, which made it stunningly clear — after a cease-fire was brokered in Iran — that we’re spending $3 trillion as our own economy goes off a cliff so that Iran can have a dysfunctional little friend.

I like General Petraeus’s air of restrained competence and Ambassador Crocker’s air of wry world-weariness. But now they seem swallowed up by the fresh violence and ancient tribal antagonisms that they were supposed to be overcoming.

A confused Chuck Hagel asked the pair: “So, where’s the surge? What are we doing? I don’t see Secretary Rice doing any Kissinger-esque flying around. Where is the diplomatic surge? ... So, where is the surge? What are you talking about?”

It’s hard to follow the narrative of our misadventure in Iraq. We went in to help the Shiites that we betrayed in the first Gulf War shake off their Sunni tormentors. But then, predictably for everyone except the chuckleheaded W. and Cheney, the Shiites began tormenting the Sunnis. So we put 90,000 Sunni Sons of Iraq — some of the same ones who were exploding American soldiers — on our payroll so they’d stop shooting at Americans and helping Al Qaeda. Our troops have gone from policing a Sunni-Shiite civil war to policing a Shiite-Shiite power struggle, while Osama bin Laden plots in peace as Al Qaeda in Iraq distracts us and drains our military resources.

Joe Biden theorized that “The Awakening,” made up of Sunnis, might decide to get into a civil war with Sunnis, presumably meaning Shiites.

But Senator Biden asked a trenchant, if attenuated, question of Mr. Crocker about Al Qaeda: “If you could take it out, you had a choice, the Lord Almighty came down and sat in the middle of the table there and said, ‘Mr. Ambassador, you can eliminate every Al Qaeda source in Afghanistan and Pakistan, or every Al Qaeda personnel in Iraq,’ which would you pick?”

Given the progress beating back Al Qaeda in Iraq, the ambassador replied, he would pick the hiding place of bin Laden.

“That would be a smart choice,” Mr. Biden noted.

You know you’re in trouble when Barbara Boxer is the voice of reason.

“Why is it,” she asked, “after all we have given — 4,024 American lives, gone; more than half-a-billion dollars spent; all this for the Iraqi people, but it’s the Iranian president who is greeted with kisses and flowers?”

She warmed to: “He got a red-carpet treatment, and we are losing our sons and daughters every single day for the Iraqis to be free. It is irritating is my point.”

Weeks of hard work by Iranian emissaries and pro-Iran elements in Iraq were supposed to ensure massive crowds thronging the streets of Baghdad and throwing flowers on the path of the visiting Iranian leader. Instead, no more than a handful of Iraqis turned up for the occasion. The numbers were so low that the state-owned TV channels in Iran decided not to use the footage at all.

Instead, much larger crowds gathered to protest Ahmadinejad's visit. In the Adhamiya district of Baghdad, several thousand poured into the streets with cries of "Iranian aggressor, go home!"

The visit's highlight was supposed to be a pilgrimage to Karbala and Najaf, the "holiest" of Shiite cities in Iraq. There, Ahmadinejad was supposed to become the first Iranian government leader since 1976 to pray at the mausoleums of Imam Hussein and Imam Ali.

In the end, however, the tour was canceled amid reports that Shiite pilgrims, including thousands from Iran, were planning to demonstrate against his presence at the "holy" cities.

A more important reason motivated Ahmadinejad to drop his planned visits to Najaf - his failure to arrange an encounter with the leading ayatollahs of the "holy" city, especially Grand Ayatollah Ali-Muhammad Sistani, the leading Shiite clergyman. For a president who claims that he's the standard-bearer of a global Shiite revolution, that was one photo-op to die for.

He had already been obliged to cancel a visit to Samarra, where the "Hidden Imam" disappeared in a well on 941 AD. Ahmadinejad had hoped to visit the ruins of the golden-domed Mausoleum of the Two Imams that was bombed by al Qaeda in 2005 and 2006 and announce a plan to rebuild the mausoleum.

The project is of special importance to Ahmadinejad, who claims to be in direct contact with the "Hidden Imam." (Last year he told his Cabinet that the "Hidden Imam" had accompanied him to the United Nations and filled the General Assembly's hall with a green light during his speech.)

But two days of demonstrations against Ahmadinejad's planned visit by the people of Samarra forced him to strike the city off his itinerary.

Nor did Ahmadinejad's presence in Baghdad go as smoothly as he'd hoped. A good part of the Iraqi political elite, including Cabinet ministers and members of the parliament, boycotted functions held in his honor. Tehran has branded the boycotters as "Saddamites and Sunnis in fact, a good number of Shiite politicians, including the leaders of the Fadila (Virtue) Party, also stayed away.

Protest marches against Ahmadinejad weren't limited to predominantly Sunni Arab cities such as Mosul, Kirkuk and Fallujah. Thousands of people also turned out in Shiite-majority Basra, Iraq's second-largest city, to oppose the visit and condemn the Islamic Republic's intervention in domestic Iraqi affairs.

The visit's political side was equally disappointing for Ahmadinejad. He failed to persuade the Iraqi leaders to stop negotiations with America on long-term arrangements ensuring US commitment to new Iraq for several more years. Nor did he succeed in obtaining cast-iron guarantees that new Iraq won't seek to renegotiate aspects of the 1975 Treaty with Iran. (Iraqi President Jalal Talabani told an interviewer last year that the treaty, signed by Saddam Hussein, doesn't reflect the interests of the Iraqi people.)

Ahmadinejad's visit also failed to produce results on such perennial Irano-Iraqi problems as the fate of thousands from both sides who remain missing in action since the 1980-88 war, and plans for reopening the Shatt al-Arab border estuary to allow a revival of maritime transport in that corner of southwestern Iran.

The Iranian visitor failed on another issue close to the heart of Iran's ruling mullahs: the handover of some 4,000 members of the Mujahedin Khalq (People's Combatants), an armed Marxist-Islamist group who live under US protection in a camp northeast of Baghdad. The Iraqi leaders paid lip service to the idea of getting rid of the "terrorists" but offered no timetable for expelling them, let alone handing them over to Tehran and certain death.

Ahmadinejad had come to Iraq to show it was an Iranian playground. He ended up by showing that Iran's influence in Iraq is widely exaggerated.

...it seems increasingly unfair to denigrate the efforts of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's government, which has moved forward on 12 of 18 benchmarks set by Congress and has recently engaged Shiite militias in a fight the United States has been demanding. 

...Obama promises to personally negotiate with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Iran's destabilizing support and training of Shiite militias.  ...

Obama -- the most reflective of candidates -- displays little self-knowledge when it comes to these political challenges. When questioned recently about his choice for vice president, he responded, "I would like somebody who knows about a bunch of stuff that I am not as expert on. I think a lot of people assume that might be some sort of military thing to make me look more commander in chief-like. . . . Ironically, this is an area -- foreign policy is the area where I am probably most confident that I know more and understand the world better than Senator Clinton or Senator McCain."

Maliki's uncoordinated attack on the Shiite militias in Basra seems to indicate that while the Iraqi spirit is willing, the flesh remains weak. But the failure of the Shiite uprising to spread more broadly shows that the extremists may be weaker than in the past. And, as Fred Kagan of the American Enterprise Institute points out, Moqtada al-Sadr was forced to cave in at the end. "By going after al-Sadr," he says, "Maliki forced the Iraqi political parties to take sides, and every single one sided with him [Maliki]."

I've never seen so many campaign surrogates get into trouble in just a few months. The Nation's John Nichols pounces on the latest example:

"The John McCain campaign is all excited about a statement that West Virginia Senator Jay Rockefeller, the chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, made about McCain's service in Vietnam.

"Unlike other war heroes who have been shot down in battle and risked their lives behind enemy lines, such as former South Dakota Senator George McGovern, McCain has chosen to make his military service a central feature of his political campaigning. Unfortunately, McCain and his supporters are hyper-sensitive about discussion's of the Arizona senator's service as a fighter pilot and a prisoner of war.

"So they go crazy whenever anyone deviates from the campaign's official story-line.

"Rockefeller did that when he told the Charleston Gazette in an interview that, 'McCain was a fighter pilot, who dropped laser-guided missiles from 35,000 feet. He was long gone when they hit. What happened when they [the missiles] get to the ground? He doesn't know. You have to care about the lives of people. McCain never gets into those issues.' "

Today, the world is facing a new and dangerous threat of international extremism and terrorism. The epicenter of this confrontation is Iraq. The new enemy is harder to defeat because it is not confined to a state, though some states are involved in its creation and promotion. It is diffused throughout many societies. But this enemy can and must be defeated. As the struggles of the last century shaped our world, this struggle will shape the world for generations to come.

This is not to say that this struggle is simple: the good versus the bad. It is complex. In Iraq, there are many layers of competing visions, interests and political objectives existing simultaneously. The people of Iraq were traumatized for decades. They are as vulnerable to the worst elements among them as they are to external forces. But there are enough of them with the will to fight for their future and their country.

This was demonstrated by the recent events in Basra, where the Iraqi government decided to pursue outlaws and armed militias engaged in criminal activities and the terrorizing of communities. It was a brave attempt given the circumstances, and was supported by all the political groups in Iraq except for the Sadrists. This was Round One. The fight will continue.

The salvation of Iraqis and the interests of the U.S. coincide. They lie in the defeat of the terrorists and extremists, and the frustration of the ambitions of all those who want this joint American-Iraqi endeavor to fail. This endeavor is costly, in every sense. But failure would be immeasurably costlier. That is why we need to build a long-term strategic alliance, and to make it work. It is in this context that we must look at the current negotiations between the U.S. and Iraq to reach a Status of Forces Agreement and a Strategic Framework Agreement.

After a bumpy learning curve, the U.S. has started to do things better in Iraq. The surge, applying the counterinsurgency principles of Gen. David Petraeus, has produced tangible results. It is not time to give up.

And he had a certain amount of steel in his voice when he then reiterated his determination not to allow the sacrifices of our fighting men and women to have been made in vain. The one thing parents and wives of slain soldiers and Marines most often asked of him, the president said, was to complete the mission for which their son or husband had died. And the president quietly said he was determined to do everything in his power to see to it that this country kept their loved ones' faith and honored their sacrifice.

April 10, 2008 -- A GAMBLE that proved too costly.

That's how analysts in Tehran describe events last month in Basra. Iran's state-run media have de facto confirmed that this was no spontaneous "uprising." Rather, Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) tried to seize control of Iraq's second-largest city using local Shiite militias as a Trojan horse.

Tehran's decision to make the gamble was based on three assumptions:

* Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki wouldn't have the courage to defend Basra at the risk of burning his bridges with the Islamic Republic in Iran.

* The international force would be in no position to intervene in the Basra battle. The British, who controlled Basra until last December, had no desire to return, especially if this meant getting involved in fighting. The Americans, meanwhile, never had enough troops to finish off al-Qaeda-in-Iraq, let alone fight Iran and its local militias on a new front.

* The Shiite clerical leadership in Najaf would oppose intervention by the new Iraqi security forces in a battle that could lead to heavy Shiite casualties.

The Iranian plan - developed by Revolutionary Guard's Quds (Jerusalem) unit, which is in charge of "exporting the Islamic Revolution" - aimed at a quick victory. To achieve that, Tehran spent vast sums persuading local Iraqi security personnel to switch sides or to remain neutral.

The hoped-for victory was to be achieved as part of a massive Shiite uprising spreading from Baghdad to the south via heartland cities such as Karbala, Kut and al-Amarah. A barrage of rockets and missiles against the "Green Zone" in Baghdad and armed attacks on a dozen police stations and Iraqi army barracks in the Shiite heartland were designed to keep the Maliki government under pressure.

To seize control of Basra, Quds commanders used units known as Special Groups. These consist of individuals recruited from among the estimated 1.8 million Iraqi refugees who spent more than two decades in Iran during Saddam Hussein's reign. They returned to Iraq shortly after Saddam's fall and started to act as liaisons between Quds and local Shiite militias.

In last month's operation, Quds commanders used the name and insignia of the Mahdi Army, a militia originally created by the maverick cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, as a cover for the Special Groups.

Initially, Quds commanders appeared to have won their bet. Their Special Groups and Mahdi Army allies easily seized control of key areas of Basra when more than 500 Iraqi security personnel abandoned their positions and disappeared into the woodwork.

Soon, however, the tide turned. Maliki proved that he had the courage to lead the new Iraqi Security Force (ISF) into battle, even if that meant confronting Iran. The ISF showed that it had the capacity and the will to fight.

Only a year ago, the ISF had been unable to provide three brigades (some 9,000 men) to help the US-led "surge" restore security in Baghdad. This time, the ISF had no difficulty deploying 15 brigades (30,000 men) for the battle of Basra.

Led by Gen. Mohan al-Freiji, the Iraqi force sent to Basra was the largest that the ISF had put together since its creation five years ago. This was the first time that the ISF was in charge of a major operation from start to finish and was fighting a large, well-armed adversary without US advisers.

During the Basra battles, the ISF did call on British and US forces to provide some firepower, especially via air strikes against enemy positions. But, in another first, the ISF used its own aircraft to transport troops and materiel and relied on its own communication system.

The expected call from the Najaf ayatollahs to stop "Shiite fratricide" failed to materialize. Grand Ayatollah Ali-Muhammad Sistani, the top cleric in Iraq, gave his blessings to the Maliki-launched operation. More broadly, the Shiite uprisings in Baghdad, Karbala, Najaf and other cities that Quds commanders had counted upon didn't happen. The "Green Zone" wasn't evacuated in panic under a barrage of rockets and missiles.

After more than a week of fighting, the Iraqis forced the Quds commanders to call for a cease-fire through Sadr. The Iraqi commander agreed - provided that the Quds force directly guaranteed it. To highlight Iran's role in the episode, he insisted that the Quds force dispatch a senior commander to finalize the accord.

The Iran-backed side lost more than 600 men, with more than 1,000 injured. The ISF lost 88 dead and 122 wounded.

Some analysts suggest this was the first war between new Iraq and the Islamic Republic. If so, the Iraqis won.

To be sure, the Iranian-backed side lost partly because Iran couldn't use its full might, especially its air force. (That almost certainly would've led to war between Iran and the US-led coalition in Iraq.)

The battle for Basra showed that Iraq has a new army that's willing and able to fight. If the 15 brigades that fought are a sample, the new Iraq may have an effective army of more than 300,000 before year's end.

But the battle also showed that the ISF still lacks the weapons systems, including attack aircraft and longer-range missiles, needed to transform tactical victories into strategic ones. The Iranian-sponsored Special Groups and their Mahdi Army allies simply disappeared from the scene, taking their weapons with them, waiting for another fight.

Tehran tried to test the waters in Basra and, as an opportunist power, would've annexed southern Iraq under a quisling administration had that been attainable at a low cost. Once it became clear that the cost might be higher than the Quds force expected, Tehran opted to back down.

Yet this was just the first round. The struggle for Iraq isn't over.

Four days after the Iraqi government, with the backing of the full spectrum of the political parties, moved to bar the Sadrist movement from running in provincial elections if it failed to disband the Mahdi Army, Muqtada al Sadr received yet another blow, this time from the clerical establishment. Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the senior most Shia cleric in Iraq, has said Sadr should disarm his Mahdi Army as “the law is the only authority in the country.”

Sistani, who has been loath to weigh in on political issues over the past, has clearly backed Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki and his government’s offensive in Basra. With the political parties in line and Sistani backing him, Maliki is now moving to enforce the edict that Basra be free of heavy and medium weapons in the hands of militias.

The media was quick to call the Basra offensive a major failure for Maliki and his government and continues to do so. Yet Sadr was the one who declared a ceasefire and withdrew his forces from the streets, Sadr will be barred from elections if he doesn’t disband the Mahdi Army, and the Iraqi military is now moving to disarm his militia. All the while, his forces are being targeted in Baghdad. And Sadr was also forced to cancel a planned demonstration in Baghdad after moving the location from Najaf to Baghdad earlier in the week. Sadr claimed the Iraqi security forces blocked the movement of his people, but Sadr’s past demonstrations have had poor showings.

Sadr faces a real dilemma over the next few weeks. If he chooses to keep the Mahdi Army, he has become an official enemy of the state and his political party will be neutered. The U.S. will back the Maliki government in a move against the Mahdi Army. If he chooses to disband Mahdi, he will also be significantly weakened. Many Sadrists and Mahdi Army commanders already resent the ceasefire. Sadr can only hope for some sort of negotiated settlement. But the Maliki government is operating from a position of strength, not weakness.

So again, how did Sadr benefit from the confrontation in Basra?

CBS, however ineptly, gamely tried to reinvent the nightly news formula to remain relevant in a new media era. How was the network to know that Couric's trademark perkiness and strange fireside interviews would repel viewers rather than attract them?