Iraq's seesaw of progress and peril

Indeed, the US military has fitfully tried to work on infrastructure and public health in Sadr City for at least a year, but the delayed start on public works cost it local goodwill, and after violence broke out this summer, it became almost impossible to carry out construction work.

Emblematic has been an effort to rebuild Sadr City's creaky sewage system. Instead, it has gotten worse, and this summer has seen an epidemic of water-borne diseases in the area.

It is this rejection of a foreign military presence, which many observers tie to Iraqis' nationalist sentiments, that has some experts advocating a timetable for US troop departures. "Iraqis will never accept a military presence, but if the Americans were to tell us when the soldiers are leaving that would reduce Iraqi doubts and they would be better accepted for that remaining time," says Daoud Salman, director of religious law studies at Baghdad University. "If that allowed the Americans to accomplish even a part of what they promised, then they could leave Iraq with their head held high."

Yet even some who support the US presence say they worry that intensifying violence is spurring more Iraqis to blame Americans for this deterioration. "The terrorists want to convince the Iraqi people it is bad to have America in Iraq, and I fear they are accomplishing that goal," says Mohammed Nabil, whose popular soda shop on Al Rabiya Street was devastated by a car bombing last week.

Authorities say seven people died, but shop owners deride those figures, saying that many more shoppers and people trapped in burning cars were killed.

For American officials looking to salvage the quest for Muslim support, it may be this rising toll of innocent civilians that proves to be the biggest stumbling block.

In Baghdad's Amiriya neighborhood, a family of refugees from Fallujah - the center of Sunni resistance - laments lost lives and suggests the prospect of more has turned them against anything the US might do. "When the Americans first came to Iraq, they came to Fallujah without a problem," says Muji al-Dariji, a gray-headed man helping families who have fled Fallujah.

But Mr. Dariji says a US offensive against Fallujah in April, and more recent airstrikes against what the US military says are terrorist sites, have changed even the uninvolved population's view.

"There was a resistance in April, but now it is innocent people, normal people who are dying in these attacks from the sky," he says. At least 15 people died in the most recent airstrikes and artillery fire Saturday.

Dariji's son, Ali Badri, who was married in Fallujah during the April siege, says the US can only lose more Iraqi support by attacking places like Fallujah.

"When Americans did patrol in Fallujah they damaged cars and houses, which was bad enough," he says. "Now they are killing people, even relying on information that sometimes comes from one family looking to settle scores with another. I used to think the US soldiers were useful if they stayed on their bases and supported stability, but now I think they should leave. They are only making Iraq worse."

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