U.S. May be Just at Midpoint in Iraq

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End portion below; whole thing here: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/iraq/2004285470_iraq5halfway16.html

Internal violence

The insurgency, however, may not be the most worrisome problem in coming years. Some people think the worst struggle will be keeping friction between Iraq's Sunnis and Shiites from ballooning into civil war.

"I don't know anyone who pays serious attention to Iraq who thinks that we are over the hump in terms of internal violence," said Jon Alterman, the Middle East program director at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. "There are a lot of unsettled scores and no ongoing political process that seems likely to address them."

If the Democrats win in November, these type of assessments will clash with their calls for a rapid and comprehensive withdrawal.

By that time, U.S. troop strength is expected to shrink with the pullout of many of the 30,000 forces that poured into central Iraq last year as part of President Bush's buildup. Pentagon officials expect to be at 140,000 soldiers by July, 8,000 more than the total before the buildup.

Sen. John McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, has predicted the insurgency will "go on for years and years and years." But, eventually, the Iraqi forces will have to fight alone. It's the often-touted South Korean scenario: local forces someday on the front lines with a U.S. military presence in a supporting role, possibly for decades.

"A thousand years. A million years. Ten million years," McCain said in New Hampshire in January. "It depends on the arrangement we have with the Iraqi government."

It depends, too, on whether the Iraqis and their government can hold on. To a lesser extent, the war's length also hinges on world sentiment. The U.N. Security Council mandate for the U.S.-led force in Iraq is set to expire at the end of the year, which could increase international pressure for withdrawal.

But more than anything else, it depends on whether Americans are willing.

Mary Shuldt is losing patience. Living at Fort Campbell in the Kentucky lowlands, she wonders how many more times her husband and the 101st Airborne Division will be called to Iraq. "Our families are being ripped apart," she said. "When is enough enough?"