Viable U.S. exit from Iraq still a long way off

BEIJING, March 19 (Xinhua) -- The memory of a burning Baghdad in the early hours of March 20, 2003 is still fresh, but most people could not have imagined that the Pandora's box would be opened at precisely the same moment as the American preemptive strike.

Five years on, the world's one and only superpower has not found a tangible way to reconstruct the war-ravaged country and a viable exit from it.

Looking back at the costs, most Americans have realized that the sheer demonstration of power, or what some consider a retaliation for the Sept. 11 terror attacks, is not cheap or easy, in light of the rapid flow of military expense, the heart-breaking bloodshed, and the die-hard insurgence in Iraq.

In March 2008, an ABC News/Washington Post poll shows that 63 percent of Americans feel the war was not worth fighting, and only a slight majority of Americans, 53 percent, believe the U.S. effort in Iraq will one day succeed.

At the start of the war, the United States spent some 4.4 billion U.S. dollars a month on military operations in Iraq. In 2007, the budget jumped to some 8.4 billion dollars a month.

According to latest estimates, America's financial costs would rise above 650 billion dollars by 2008, on their way to perhaps 2 trillion if the commitment continues for another five years.

More heavy is the human cost. A total of 3,990 U.S. troops have fallen in Iraq since the war started, and over 29,000 soldiers have been wounded.

Beyond that, the Iraqi people were living in a deeper quagmire.

Some 82,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed and a million or more are living as refugees in neighboring Arab countries.

In addition, war crimes committed in Iraq horrified the world again and again -- the torture of Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib prison, the shooting deaths of 24 civilians at Haditha and the rape and murder of a 14-year-old girl at Mahmudiya, along with the killing of three other members of her family.

The streets were never safe, even for ordinary Iraqis. Innocent people fell victims to religious strife or suicide bombings targeting the allied troops.

The Shiites -- which won the December 2005 election -- finally came to power after being ruled by the Sunni minority for decades. The Kurds in the north are seeking autonomy and a share of power in the central government.

Iraqi lawmakers are considering an oil law to divide the country's oil and gas profits among Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds to achieve national reconciliation.

The Iraqi security forces have not been capable of maintaining social order on their own, not to mention preventing the country from sliding toward a civil war.

Last year, the United States raised its troop commitment to Iraq above 160,000, the highest level since the invasion, and finally began to see the war's death toll dropping.

Attacks across Iraq have fallen by 60 percent since last June, when the troop build-up was completed.

Though the surge was strongly opposed by the Democrats, the nation seemed to have been left little choice.

In the run-up to the U.S. presidential election, the Iraq war has become a major debate topic.

The Democratic contenders, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, both pledged to withdraw U.S. troops at a rate of one or two brigades a month. But analysts believe their words were just words.

Republican presidential candidate John McCain, who has secured his candidacy in the Republican camp, visited Baghdad on March 16-17.

McCain stressed it was important to maintain the U.S. commitment in Iraq, where a U.S.-Iraq military operation is under way to clear al-Qaida from its last urban stronghold of Mosul, 360km northwest of Baghdad.

McCain said during campaigning in the United States last week that the quickest way to bring the war to an end was by continuing the troop surge.

"I believe the American people will have the patience to see this through," McCain said.