You can set your clock by them

Kagro X at Daily Kos notes that June is the month when the Bush administration talks about closing Guantanamo.
And looking at the BBC Iraq timeline, September seems to be the month when Iraq is really turning a corner, while January is the month when significant progress is being made. April is the month when casualties skyrocket, thus demonstrating the imminence of American success.
At this rate, the US should be achieving the milestone of 5,000 troops killed right around the time of the 2008 Presidential election.
Or maybe faster -- now the American troops are being told to patrol on foot because Iraqi bombs are getting too good. And Robert Farley at Lawyers, Guns and Money notes that the return to "sweeps" is a demonstration of bankrupt strategy:

. . . maybe this offensive [in western Baquba] will achieve what no other counter-insurgency offensive has achieved (barring perhaps some minor local successes), and actually trap the 500 or so fighters that look like everyone else amid a civilian population that hasn't fled. If history is any guide, however, they won't; they'll catch and kill some, many more will escape, plenty of civilians will either be killed or have their houses destroyed, and little of any significance will be accomplished.

Somewhere else in the blogosphere, a link I cannot find now, I also read a question about what are they're doing in Baquba when it was supposed to be Baghdad that the surge was going to target. Oh well, that was last month's idea. Another day, another "plan" to win Iraq!