A War on Rewind, in a Bleaker Baghdad

Iraqi soldier guards captured suspected militants in Baqouba, Iraq Tuesday, June 19, 2007. About 10,000 U.S. soldiers using heavily armored Stryker and Bradley fighting vehicles fought their way in Baqouba northeast of Baghdad early Tuesday. American and Iraqi forces, under cover of attack helicopters, killed at least 22 insurgents, the military said. (AP Photo/Talal Mohammed) (Talal Mohammed - AP)

BAGHDAD -- In Iraq, after four years and three months of war, the echoes have begun to echo themselves.

American troops are taking Baghdad's streets back from insurgents. The prime minister has a plan for national reconciliation. To the south, in the "triangle of death," two U.S. soldiers are missing, captives in enemy hands.

Those were the headlines a year ago. Now they're being heard again in the newscasts of today, like some grim rewinding of a movie tragedy, of a story that never ends.

At the White House last June, back from a secretive trip to Baghdad, an upbeat President Bush told reporters assembled in the Rose Garden, "I sense something different happening in Iraq."

It's June again and those roses are once more in bloom. But in Baghdad the scene looks only bleaker.

To a visitor returning after a year, the something different is the spread of concrete blast barriers across ever more of the city, the accumulation of still more rubble, the sectarian "cleansing" of neighborhoods, the ruin of still more lives _ of friends whose loved ones have fled, been kidnapped, been killed. And for those left behind, life is worse.

Old Baghdad's constants remain: The sun, boiling orange, still slips below the western desert each evening; the river Tigris snakes, shallow and sluggish, through the city's heart; the muezzins' call to prayer still blares from countless mosques.

The constants of war also remain: the thud of sunrise explosions, somewhere; the zigzagging of convoys down the dangerous roads; the roar of Black Hawk helicopters skimming the tops of Baghdad's minarets.

But the war also has taken new and different turns in the past year.

Insurgent bombers have targeted the bridges over the Tigris and over Baghdad's critical highways. More than ever they're hitting the fortress-like Green Zone, home of the U.S. Embassy and Iraqi government; they've hammered the enclave with rockets and mortar fire more than 80 times since March, reportedly killing at least 26 people, U.N. figures show. On Tuesday, another mortar barrage hit the area.

The U.S. forces in the latest "take back the streets" campaign are suffering more as well _ 126 killed in Iraq overall this May, compared with 69 in May 2006.

Young soldiers' attitudes are suffering, too, after repeat tours in Iraq. Almost half in a Pentagon survey released last month said their unit's morale is low or very low. Morale took a fresh blow when the Army announced that 12-month tours would be extended to 15.