Petraeus & Crocker

Gen. David Petraeus, the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, and Ambassador Ryan Crocker were unsentimental in describing the road ahead. "We haven't turned any corners," Petraeus warned. "We haven't seen any lights at the end of the tunnel." Crocker, whose world-weary answers sometimes sound as if they were scripted by Graham Greene or Raymond Chandler, often reduced his message to five flinty words: Nothing is easy in Iraq.