From Rory Stewart who served as the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq as Deputy Governor of the southern provinces of Maysan and Dhi Qar 2003-4:

What would I do in Iraq now? I am not an expert, but I believe that the time has come to withdraw, that our presence is infantilizing the Iraqi political system. That we're like an inadequate antibiotic. We are sufficiently strong to have turned what might have been a conventional civil war into a highly unconventional neighborhood conflict. But we're not strong enough to eliminate it entirely. At the same time I fear that, without intending to, we have discredited democracy in the eyes of many Iraqis. We have created a situation in which many Iraqis now feel that the only way to keep security is to bring back a strongman. They are extremely skeptical of our programs and suggestions for development.

I think that Iraqi politicians are considerably more competent, canny, and capable of compromise than we acknowledge. Iraqi nationalism, in my view, can trump the Shiite-Sunni divisions. Our continuing presence is encouraging Iraqi politicians to play hard-ball with each other. Were we to leave, they would be weaker and under more pressure to compromise. .....

An al-Qaida front group that claims it has captured American soldiers warned the United States on Monday to stop searching for them and suggested it attacked the U.S. convoy as revenge for the rape and murder of a local teenager last year.
...
"You should remember what you have done to our sister Abeer in the same area," the statement said, referring to five American soldiers who were charged in the rape and killing of 14-year-old Abeer Qassim al-Janabi and the killings of her parents and her younger sister last year.

So must the anguish and anger the Iraqi people live with. Unbelievably consuming hatred that will probably take generations to fade.

January 10, 2007:

President Bush announced tonight that he was sending more than 21,000 American troops to Iraq

Four years to the day after standing on the deck of an aircraft carrier and declaring "major combat operations" in Iraq were over, President Bush on Tuesday vetoed a war-spending bill that calls for the start of a withdrawal of American combat troops from the conflict.

"This bill will deprive us of the opportunity to destroy the American forces which we have caught in a historic trap," Zawahiri says in answer to a question posed to him an interviewer....Continuing in the same tone, Zawahiri says, "We ask Allah that they only get out of it after losing 200,000 to 300,000 killed, in order that we give the spillers of blood in Washington and Europe an unforgettable lesson."...Based on the references to the bill, the tape, produced by al Qaeda's propaganda arm, as-Sahab, appears to have been made after Congress passed the legislation last week but before President Bush vetoed in on Thursday.