We are all just prisoners here, of our own device

From the Washington Post comes news of the conclusions of the Iraq Study Group, which has spent the last eight months trying to find a way out of that horrible mess. Under its recommendations:

the emphasis of the U.S. military presence in Iraq would shift from fighting the insurgency and containing sectarian violence to backing up Iraqi security forces dealing with those problems. This approach would place less emphasis on combat operations and more on logistics, intelligence and training and advising Iraqi units.

However,

Also, a large residual combat force would be required to protect all the personnel involved in those operations and to provide a security guarantee to the Iraqi government.

This could be described as the Hotel California option: you can checkout any time you like, but you can never leave.