It seems to be a big week for war reports.  I don't mean journalists standing in front of blazing cityscapes (we've got enough of that within our own borders at the moment).  Instead, I'm thinking of several big written reports that have hit the desks of the nation's war deciders this week.  Juan Cole at Salon has ably summed up the release of casualty numbers from Iraq today, which seem to point to -- not much, beyond that things aren't getting appreciably worse, so maybe they're going to get better.

Then there's the McChrystal Report.  This was supposed to land on President Obama's desk today, making for a little light reading over the Labor Day weekend.  That Press Secretary Robert Gibbs is talking down the importance of the report, oddly, makes me think it's incredibly important and might just knock Lush Life off the president's bedside reading table.  More on the report [The Guardian]:

This is, in a way, McChrystal's coming out party as the new Commander in Afghanistan, the culmination of the 60-day review that Defense Secretary Bob Gates ordered when McChrystal took over for Gen. McKiernan in June.  It may also be the opening salvo in a battle to get more troops sent to Afghanistan.  At the least, it's a plea for those above McChyrstal -- read: President Obama, Secretary Gates, and probably the Joint Chiefs and NSC -- to come up with a new plan, including new victory conditions, for Afghanistan STAT. 

The report comes on the heels of the contested, violent elections two weeks ago and the highest American casualty rate (302) for Afghanistan since 2001.  Just today, the deputy intelligence chief in Afghanistan, a stalwart ally of current president Hamid Karzai, was killed in a suicide bombing.  All of this, on top of the recent deployment of 20,000 additional troops, has led to unsurprising and increasing American frustration with the war in general -- just check George Will's latest for a summary.

Will the McChrystal report kick war planning into a higher gear?  It seems like it has to -- but I've got absolutely no idea about which direction things will go.  It seems equally likely that Obama will decide to start a drawdown as it does he'll order a larger assault.  The center, however, cannot hold.