“What are we getting into here?” asked a sergeant with the U.S. Army’s 4th Infantry Division who is stationed near Baqubah, a city 30 miles northeast of Baghdad. “The war is supposed to be over, but every day we hear of another soldier getting killed. Is it worth it? Saddam isn’t in power anymore. The locals want us to leave. Why are we still here?”

“The way it seemed is, once Iraqis got over being grateful for getting rid of Saddam, they found out quickly they don’t want the Americans, either,” said Sgt. Nestor Torres, a military policeman with the 3rd Infantry Division in the restive town of Fallujah, 35 miles west of Baghdad. “Everyone is blending in with everyone else, so you can’t tell the friendly ones from the hostile.”

When the battalion first arrived in Baqubah in late April, “every single person was waving at us,” said 2nd Lt. Skip Boston, 24, of Marshalltown, Iowa. Now, he said, “they just stare.”

“A man told me the other day that we’ve been here for two months and nothing’s changed,” Boston said. “That’s not really true, but all they see is us riding up and down the roads and being a nuisance for them.”

“Tell President Bush to bring us home.” On a skylight atop Fallujah’s city hall, a soldier has scrawled in the dust: “I’ll kill for a ticket home.”

(It's appears Bush has gotten us into another Vietnam war.)