FRIEDMANS: ONLY FOR "SERIOUS" PEOPLE

Yes, O'Hanlon and Pollack gave the by-now standard Friedman Unit(©Atrios) - another 6 months - as the time we should wait for things to turn around in Iraq. This is from their appearance on FOX NEWS SUNDAY with Chris Wallace (via Lexis-Nexis):

WALLACE: Michael, one area about which you're not optimistic is the Iraqi central government and the moves toward national reconciliation.
Here's what you wrote, "Iraqi politicians of all stripes continue to dawdle and maneuver for position against one another when major steps toward reconciliation or at least accommodation are needed."
Michael, do you see any signs that the Maliki -- Prime Minister Maliki and the parliament are getting their act together? And absent serious moves toward national reconciliation, does the surge make sense?

O'HANLON: I think it makes sense for a while to see if the momentum can spread from the battlefield to the political theater. Ken's the greater expert on Iraqi politics than I, but my overall impression is if you don't get even some top-level, top-down movement coming up fairly soon, this thing can't work. Politics trumps the battleground in the end.
And I think, therefore, this is an interim report from us on the surge, and it's basically saying nothing more dramatic than give it six more months or so, maybe nine more months.
If things don't start to progress in that time, I personally would be a lot less optimistic and/or in favor of trying to prod the Iraqis to dump Prime Minister Maliki. That's me, not Ken.

WALLACE: Well, let me ask you, Ken, do you see any signs that Maliki and the parliament are getting their act together?

POLLACK: Basically none. The political side was absolutely dead in the water, exactly as Mike is suggesting.
You know, one thing to keep in mind is that as General Petraeus has repeatedly pointed out, the idea is that with security and local- level economic and political development, you create some space. There's an expectation that the politics is going to lag. It's going to take longer.
But this level of political stalemate is absolutely unacceptable. And I agree with Mike entirely that we can't give this much more time.
And I think that the U.S. -- the administration needs to be pushing much harder and maybe even thinking about, if the surge continues to work in terms of providing security, can we move to a different government, one that actually would be able to strike these hard bargains.

ThinkProgess has the video clip and also found that O'Hanlon called an FU last March and Pollack did the same in March 2006.