U.S. Confronts Reality of Iraq in 2006

In this image released by the U.S. Marine Corps, Marines with Bravo Company, 9th Engineer Support Battalion, 1st Marine Logistics Group, perform a 21-shot rifle salute in honor of Marine Cpl. Aaron L. Seal of Elkhart, Ind, during a memorial ceremony held at the main-side chapel at Camp al Taqaddum in Iraq's volatile al Anbar province, Tuesday, Dec. 12, 2006. Seal, 23, was killed Sunday, Oct. 1, 2006 while serving with a South Bend-based Marine Reserve engineering company in Baghdad. At least 2,939 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003. (AP Photo/U.S. Marines, Lance Cpl. Ryan Busse) (Lance Cpl Ryan Busse - AP)

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- After years of optimistic claims from Washington, Iraq is ending 2006 with the American strategy in shambles and a politically weakened Bush administration struggling for a way out of the impasse.

Sectarian slaughter rages in Baghdad and religiously mixed areas, carried out by shadowy militias and death squads believed linked to Shiite and Sunni politicians and clerics. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has done little to curb the militias _ some linked to his fellow Shiite allies.

In the dusty towns of Anbar province, Sunni Arab insurgents ambush American and Iraqi forces daily. An estimated 100,000 Iraqis flee the country every month to escape the violence, according to the Washington-based Refugees International. The U.S. death toll neared 3,000 in December.

Gone is talk of "staying the course," a phrase which President Bush himself has disowned. Gone too is the hope that the mere establishment of a democratically elected government of national unity would be enough to stem the bloodshed.

Instead, a bipartisan commission, led by longtime Bush family friend James Baker, has described the situation as "grave and deteriorating" and warned that America's ability to influence events in this turbulent country "is diminishing."

Equally damning, the commission accused the Pentagon of significantly underreporting the level of violence. After nearly four years of war, the U.S. "still does not understand very well either the insurgency in Iraq or the role of the militias," the commission said.

The situation has become so desperate that some U.S. politicians believe the best course is to give up on a unified Iraq and partition the country along religious and ethnic lines _ even though the idea finds little support among the majority of Iraqis.

That bleak reality is vastly different from what U.S. officials were hoping for a year ago.

With a new constitution ratified and a freely elected parliament in place, hopes ran high that 2006 would mark a turning point in the U.S. campaign to build a stable democracy on the wreckage of Saddam Hussein's dictatorship.

U.S. officials even spoke of reducing U.S. troop strength in Iraq below 100,000 by the end of 2006, and Iraq's national security adviser confidently assured reporters of a "sizable gross reduction" in American forces here.

Those hopes were dashed after Feb. 22 when Sunni Arab extremists blew up a sacred Shiite shrine in Samarra, a Sunni city north of Baghdad. That brazen attack outraged the country's long-suffering Shiite majority, which had endured suicide attacks, car bombings and assassinations by Sunni religious extremists, including al-Qaida in Iraq.

The Samarra blast triggered a wave of sectarian reprisal killings that has led many scholars and political analysts to conclude that the country is now in a low-intensity civil war _ with the 140,000 U.S. troops caught in the middle.