Steve Clemons features a CNN interview worth reading with free-lance writer, filmmaker and photographer Nir Rosen of the New America Foundation on the situation in Iraq. According to Rosen, who has spent two years in Iraq, the Shiites have ethnically cleansed Baghdad of Sunnis, so that it is no longer a Sunni city. Iraq has been completely remade and it has no central government, only warlords. The picture is grim:

FOREMAN: So Nir, we keep hearing reports, though, nonetheless out of Baghdad. People saying that give us time, we are trying to get this government worked out. We are going to make some progress. Do you see any way that can happen?

ROSEN: No. This has been the case for the past ... two years at least. There is no hope. There is no government. Neither side is interested in compromise and why should they? The Shias control Baghdad. They have removed the Sunnis from Baghdad, from Iraq's political future.

FOREMAN: What's going to change that if anything?

ROSEN: Nothing is going to change that.

It will be interesting to see how General Petraeus manages to spin that reality in the coming weeks.