Petraeus says Iraq is like Northern Ireland

Oh, that's good. A conflict that's been going on 800 years is General Petraeus' recipe-for-success in Iraq. From the Washington Post:

Claiming steady, albeit slow, military and political progress, Petraeus said the "many, many challenges" would not be resolved "in a year or even two years." Similar counterinsurgency operations, he said, citing Britain's experience in Northern Ireland, "have gone at least nine or 10 years."

Nine or ten years? Try nearly a thousand. Anglo-Norman mercenaries invaded Ireland in 1169, and it was all downhill from there. I guess Korea's fifty-year military deployment wasn't enough of a template for General Petraeus, now he's looking for an American withdrawal from Iraq sometime in the year 2845.