Are we winning yet?

As the body count mounts in Iraq, and midterm elections loom, that's the question of the moment.

Unfortunately, as Americans have come to expect, the answer depends on what the definition of "winning" is.

President Bush tried to clarify that definition Wednesday at a morning news conference -- and later in the day meeting with a small group of journalists in the Oval Office.

This is a little tricky, so pay attention.

First, "winning" is closely tied to "staying the course," another term seeking definition the past few days. As of this writing, "staying the course" means "winning," which means "not losing," but you knew that.

And what does "not losing" mean? According to Bush, it means not leaving. Which no one wants to hear, but there it is.

Leaving Iraq -- or "cutting and running," as the sound bite goes -- would be tantamount to surrender, Bush implied.

"The only defeat is leaving," he also said.

And finally, "If we leave, they will follow us here."

Aha, that's more like it.

Americans pilloried by platitudes and bludgeoned by body counts could use a little if/then perspective. "If we leave, they will follow" is pretty clear-cut.

But what happens if we stay? More Americans will die, surely. More sectarian violence will occur. The end, it seems, is nowhere in sight, but that doesn't mean we're losing.

I told you it was tricky.

The new plan is for the U.S. and Iraqi governments to create mutually agreeable benchmarks -- but no timetables. Meanwhile, Bush is urging Americans to see the big picture.

Part of the problem, he says, is that our enemy gets to define victory. Because Bush has made a conscious decision not to announce the enemy's body count, Americans hear only that 3,000 U.S. military personnel have died, or that 60,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed.

It's easy to infer from such news that we are losing. Big time. And as Bush put it, nobody wants to hear that we opened four more schools this week. Continued...