Pentagon weighs in to say the surge is a failure. Nobody can really be surprised by this.

Three months into the new U.S. military strategy that has sent tens of thousands of additional troops into Iraq, overall levels of violence in the country have not decreased, as attacks have shifted away from Baghdad and Anbar, where American forces are concentrated, only to rise in most other provinces, according to a Pentagon report released yesterday.

The report -- the first comprehensive statistical overview of the new U.S. military strategy in Iraq -- coincided with renewed fears of sectarian violence after the bombing yesterday of the same Shiite shrine north of Baghdad that was attacked in February 2006, unleashing a spiral of retaliatory bloodshed. Iraq's government imposed an immediate curfew in Baghdad yesterday to prevent an outbreak of revenge killings.

Yesterday's attack adds to tensions faced by U.S. troops, who are paying a mounting price in casualties as they push into Iraqi neighborhoods, seeking to quell violence that the report said remains fundamentally driven by sectarianism.

I have heard that General Petraeus is ready to report that the surge is working and ask for an extension. So the question is will the Republicans side with the President on this or with the Pentagon?

With the uptick in violence against Iraqis having moved to the suburbs outside of Baghdad, and with the increase in American deaths since the surge began, Petraeus is going to have to be a magician to convince anybody that this is all going according to plan.

Surely even the Republicans are not this easily duped.