They don't like us there.

People do not like foreign troops on their own land. You would not like it if every day you had to drive through several check points in your town with troops from another country guarding them, and then once a week you would hear that several people from your town were killed because the soldiers guarding the check point made a mistake and shot up their car.

While the "liberal" press in the US has long ago stopped reporting such incidents, if you read any of the local newspapers in the Middle East, it has become almost a weekly occurance that US troops shoot up a car or van full of women and children at a checkpoint because someone made a mistake.

That does wonders for their popularity in the local Iraqi community.

It's been 3 years that we've been there, it's 120 degrees in the summer, and half of the population still does not have their electricity restored to pre-war levels. That means no air-conditioning, no lights, etc. Most do not have clean drinking water. Most cities have curfews around 8pm at night. People are not allowed to come out of their homes after that time or else they will be shot. Unemployment is around 50%. Crime levels are rediculously high -- it's like the Wild West there.

They are pissed. The sooner we get the hell out of there, the sooner they can fix their problems and get back to normal life. As long as we stay there, things are just going to get worse.