People seem to be burning a lot of calories these days trying to figure out what's happening with our occupation of Iraq. Some see the daily reports of dead U.S. soldiers as indication of a failing plan. Others see the occasional reports by heavily guarded visitors saying everything is in fact great as an indication that the media is biased and things are actually on track.

How are things going, then? It seems to me that both of these sources of information are ridiculously anecdotal, and really can't be counted on to give us much of an indication either way. In fact, with the possible exception of our government, nobody has access to enough information to give an accurate analysis of such a complex and volatile situation, and of course the administration's assurances that everything is going swell have to be taken with a grain of salt, since their political butts are on the line.

So what are we left with? I think Kevin Drum pretty much nails it. We may not have any idea of what's going on, but theoretically the Bush administration does, and clearly their actions aren't consistent with a situation that is going as they'd hoped:

Before the war they expected to draw down troop levels to around 30,000 by now. This hasn't happened, so obviously events on the ground have turned out to be a lot worse than they originally expected.

[W]e've seen the following actions recently: (a) keeping the 3rd ID in country after scheduling them to return, (b) rotating officers and senior NCOs out of their units, (c) extending the tours of regular troops, and (d) extending the tours of reservists. Now apparently leaves are being shortened. These are risky moves, and the Army wouldn't be making them unless the reality on the ground continued to be grim.

The White House has shuffled responsibility for Iraqi reconstruction three times, first to Jay Garner, then to Jerry Bremer, and finally giving Condoleezza Rice a bigger role, the last move provoking a furious response from Donald Rumsfeld, who apparently learned about it via memo and media reports.

Last month Bush shocked everyone by requesting an additional $87 billion for Iraqi reconstruction. He wouldn't have requested a sum this large if he could have gotten by with less.

Finally, there's the UN. Regardless of what his apologists say now, it's pretty obvious that Bush didn't want to fight for another UN resolution. He wouldn't have done this unless he'd been convinced that he had no other choice.

Combining this with the administration's approach to post-war planning from the onset, it has become really hard for me to be optimistic that the occupation is going well, or is going to end well.