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)

Many Iraqis couldn't cope. An estimated 650,000 _ more than 2 percent of the prewar population of about 27 million _ have left the country since 2005, adding to more than 1 million already existing refugees. Some 2 million more have been driven from their homes but remain within Iraq, the U.N. refugee agency says.

Taking over in May 2006, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki pledged to push legislation to unify Iraq's Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish factions. "We've got a prime minister who is very much hands-on," said the U.S. ambassador at the time, Zalmay Khalilzad.

Al-Maliki's efforts have foundered, however, and a new ambassador, Ryan Crocker, takes a less positive view.

"Whether it is ultimately within his power to bring Iraq to a successful state, I mean, again, I can't tell you that it is," Crocker said last month.

Amid more of the same, Iraqis wait.

Behind heavy security earlier this month, hundreds of Shiite and Sunni scholars gathered to promote Muslim and Iraqi unity, but in the end could offer little but the echo of a question from last year and years before.

"How long," one asked, "will Iraqi blood be shed?"

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Associated Press special correspondent Charles J. Hanley, who first reported from Baghdad in 2002, has returned after a 14-month absence.

(This version CORRECTS that the 2,155 Iraqis who were killed last month, according to an AP count, also included Iraqi security forces and not just civilians)