US planes pounded Najaf’s cemetery and historic centre near the Imam Ali shrine, dimming hopes of a peaceful end to a near three-week stand-off between US-led Iraqi forces and Shiite militia.

As US military officials said it could take up to 10 years to crush the insurgency, nine people, including a Turk, were killed in a string of deadly roadside attacks, US military and police sources said.~ Yahoo News, August 24, 2004

It is obvious that the American public will never tolerate an ongoing guerrilla war for ten years, no matter how horribly misled they have been in the past. The public may be easy to incite, but it will be very difficult to keep their attention and their anger focused on a country that, as most now know, posed no threat before and poses none now.