By Anthony Cordesman
Sunday, April 4, 2004

The horrifying images of four American bodies being desecrated in Fallujah are a brutal reminder that the United States is involved in a very real war, as well as an uncertain nation-building exercise of vast strategic importance. We may want to avert our gaze from these images, just as we might like to turn away from the grisly reality of the battlefield in Iraq. Yet we remain transfixed and are left wondering: What are we doing there and how long will it take to do it?

This is not a war that we can yet say we are winning. The most senior U.S. defense officials say that new combatants are emerging as fast as we can kill or capture the old ones. We may have reduced the number of cells of former regime loyalists, but a new mixture has emerged, made up of Baath loyalists, Sunnis angry at the United States and fearful of a loss of privilege and power, and native Iraqi Islamists, along with foreign Islamic fighters and other volunteers. At this point, U.S. intelligence officials cannot even agree on whether al Qaeda exercises any kind of central leadership over its activities in Iraq or has "franchised" its operations so that groups and cells with only loose links to al Qaeda's leaders are playing a key role.