President Bush belatedly outlined for the public yesterday his “National Strategy for Victory in Iraq.” If this is his starting point for a more in-depth conversation with the country over Iraq, the president did well. If this is as far as he intends to go, it is inadequate.

A couple of points on which he is right: Simply abandoning Iraq immediately invites a disaster worse than one potentially wrought by remaining; and there will never be a victory “signaled by a single particular event – there will be no Battleship Missouri, no Appomattox.”

The president asserts the coalition forces are making progress or at least allowing for progress politically, but the question of a measurable victory of any sort must include the cessation of the current level of violence. The Brookings Institution has kept track

of that since the war’s beginning and reports the following:

. Between April 2003 and December 2004 about 65 Iraqi police were killed each month. Since then, the average killed monthly has been 160, with a high of 304 in July and 157 killed in November.

. Car bombings are down to 60 per month now vs. 135 in each of April and May of this year but remain at three times the level of car bombings compared with a year ago.

. Suicide bombings are way up over any measure, as are those killed or wounded in multiple fatality bombings. The number of detained or killed insurgents is also up, from 2,000 per month in the spring and summer to 3,000 per month now.

Is it progress if many more Iraqi soldiers are trained, as the president says, but the number of attacks remains undiminished or increase?

Finding a path to peace, from wherever conditions now stand in Iraq, should be the common goal, and the president could help make it that by going further in recognizing that his administration has made mistakes.

Sen. Susan Collins notes the president began to do that yesterday and could help himself by saying “regardless of your views on getting into Iraq, now we should join together” to find the best way out. She also encouraged the president to continue having speeches: “Part of the erosion of public support is a feeling that they don’t know where we’re going or how this is going to end.”

As President Bush argued yesterday, Sen. Joe Lieberman, Democrat of Connecticut, argued in the Wall Street Journal two days ago. “This is a war between 27 million and 10,000,” he wrote, “27 million Iraqis who want to live lives of freedom, opportunity and prosperity and roughly 10,000 terrorists …

“Every time the 27 million Iraqis have been given the chance since Saddam was overthrown, they have voted for self-government and hope over violence and hatred the 10,000 terrorists offer them.”

The 10,000 is likely wrong – Brookings estimates 15,000 insurgents have been killed or detained in just the last six months, but, yes, certainly, because the United States broke Iraq, the United States (temporarily) owns it, and there are excellent reasons, including millions of Iraqis, for trying to help fix it.

The shopworn comparison used with Iraq is Vietnam, but a better possibility is the former Yugoslavia, where a political implosion lifted the artificial unity of the country and led to prolonged, violent conflict among former countrymen. Were the United States to leave Iraq, count on that happening there, where already Shiites are suspected of taking hostage and torturing Sunnis.

Keeping U.S. troops in Iraq as support for the war falls will be difficult, but explaining this nation’s policies there rather than merely asserting its success could help. It at least would be a welcome change.