His basic point: where are the Iraqi faces in the New Iraq? "Americans can't win in Iraq," he says. "Only Iraqis can win in Iraq."

Gingrich argues that the administration has been putting far too much emphasis on a military solution and slighting the political element. "The real key here is not how many enemy do I kill. The real key is how many allies do I grow," he says. "And that is a very important metric that they just don't get." He contends that the civilian-run CPA is fairly isolated and powerless, hunkered down inside its bunker in Baghdad. The military has the money and the daily contact with the locals. But it's using the same tactics in a guerrilla struggle that led to defeat in Vietnam.

"The Army's reaction to Vietnam was not to think about it," he says. Rather than absorb the lessons of counterinsurgency, Gingrich says, the Army adopted "a deliberate strategy of amnesia because people didn't want to ever do it again."

In essence, the Americans never did transfer power. They disbanded the Iraqi Army and the government, realized that was a mistake, and quickly tried to cobble together an Iraqi police force and military. But the Iraqis in uniform today are seen by too many Iraqi citizens as American collaborators. Gingrich faults the Americans for not quickly establishing some sort of Iraqi government, however imperfect. "The idea that we are going to have a corruption-free, pristine, League of Women Voters government in Iraq on Tuesday is beyond naivete," he scoffs. "It is a self-destructive fantasy." (The White House insists that it is paying close attention to local politics and has speeded up the timetable to turn over power to the Iraqis.)

The rumor mill in the Pentagon suggests that Bush's "exit strategy" is to get American troops coming home in waves by next November's election. Obliquely, Gingrich indicates that would be a huge mistake. The guerrillas cannot be allowed to believe that they only have to outlast the Americans to win. "The only exit strategy is victory," Gingrich says. But not by brute American force. "We are not the enforcers. We are the reinforcers," says Gingrich. "The distinction between these two words is central to the next year in Iraq."