I'm not sure who exactly is devising the strategy on the ground in Iraq (or indeed if anyone is), but I can tell you things are not going well. As American forces waited until after the election to go after insurgents in Fallujah (Bush didn't want too many war dead hampering his reelection bid), most of the anti-American forces fled the city areas not to be imminently attacked by the US. One of the consequences of this is that the insurgency appears to be spreading--quickly. This from the AP's Robert Reid:

The Iraqi government rushed reinforcements Friday to the country's third-largest city, Mosul, seeking to quell a deadly militant uprising that U.S. officials suspected may be in support of the resistance in Fallujah — now said to be under 80 percent U.S. control.

Police in Mosul largely disappeared from the streets, residents reported, and gangs of armed men brandishing automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenade launchers roamed the city, 225 miles north of Baghdad. Responding to the crisis, Iraqi authorities dismissed Mosul's police chief after local officials reported that officers were abandoning their stations to militants without firing a shot.

Elsewhere, insurgents shot down a U.S. Army UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter near Taji, 12 miles north of Baghdad, wounding three crew members, the military said. It was the third downed helicopter this week after two Marine Super Cobras succumbed to ground fire in the Fallujah operation.

Things are not looking good across the country. I wish I had something positive to say about the situation, but alas I am not blindly optimistic.