For a long time, many Americans worried whether Iraq was becoming another Vietnam.
Now, as sectarian strife between Shiite and Sunni Muslims spreads, a grimmer and more disturbing question is emerging: Could Iraq become another Lebanon?
With the US military campaign in Iraq entering its fourth year, longtime concerns about the stubborn insurgency are being compounded by new fears that the country stands on the verge of civil war.
"Could anyone imagine it would be more perilous than it is today?" Bruce Hoffman, a defense analyst for the Rand Corp, said Thursday in an interview. "The prospect of civil war is looming much larger than at any time in the past."
The bombing of a Shiite holy shrine at a mosque in Samarra on Feb. 22 unleashed a bloodbath that has claimed 1,500 lives and set off a wave of retribution killings.
Rob Malley, head of Middle East studies for the International Crisis Group in Brussels, Belgium, sees an even worse threat. He worries about the Iraq war extending beyond its borders and becoming a regional conflict, with Iran, Saudi Arabia and other neighbors pulled into the fray.
"The more chaotic the situation becomes, the more it spills over into neighboring states, and the more those states will take action to protect their interests," Malley said.
The Bush administration's hard-line stance against Iran's nuclear ambitions, Malley said, collides with its attempt to persuade Iranian-affiliated Iraqi Shiites to give Sunnis more oil revenues and a larger role in the government now being formed. Martin Van Creveld, a prominent Israeli military historian who is the only non-US author on the US Army's required reading list for officers, offered a brutal assessment of the decision to invade Iraq. It was, Van Creveld said, the worst military adventure in 20 centuries.
"For misleading the American people and launching the most foolish war since Emperor Augustus in 9BC sent his legions into Germany and lost them, Bush deserves to be impeached and, once he has been removed from office, put on trial," Van Creveld wrote in the Forward, a mainly Jewish-readership newspaper in New York.
Despite the president's repeated vows to stay the course, the current public debate about Iraq, across a broad political spectrum, focuses on when the 133,000 US troops can leave and how much they can limit the damage before their withdrawal.
"Our presence in Iraq is part of the problem, but our presence in Iraq is also part of the solution," said Carey Cavanaugh, a senior US State Department official working temporarily at the Pentagon.
Three years after US President George W. Bush launched the invasion of Iraq with a massive air assault followed by a land invasion and quick march to Baghdad, the war that he thought would be quick and relatively painless shows no signs of ending any time soon.
As the US death toll in Iraq climbs toward 2,500 and the violence grinds on, Bush and his top aides have adopted a more pragmatic approach to the war.
In a series of speeches over the last four months, Bush has acknowledged that his administration made mistakes in both planning and executing the war. And he has shown a new appreciation for the Sunni-dominated insurgents' prowess -- their coordinated attacks, suicide bombings and increasingly sophisticated, often remote-controlled, explosive devices.
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