"This is really about a war plan that went wrong based on a series of bad decisions that reflected really abysmal intelligence," said Loren Thompson, head of the Lexington Institute, a military think tank outside Washington.
Jon Alterman, who worked on Iraq policy at the State Department before the war and is now an analyst with the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said his many American and Iraqi contacts in the embattled country are at more and more of a loss.
"Everybody I know who works in Iraq and the Iraqis themselves say it's becoming increasingly difficult to figure out what's going on," he said.
Even the war's strongest and earliest supporters speak in much less enthusiastic terms about the venture.
Danielle Pletka, a foreign policy expert with the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, organized major prewar conferences of Iraqi expatriates who outlined ambitious goals for a democratic Iraq ushered in by US military action.
"For a lot of us, we thought Iraq could look different than it does today, and we were wrong," Pletka said.
Victor Davis Hanson, a military historian at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, is among the few outside analysts who think things are going reasonably well in Iraq.
"The problem is that the people at home think we don't have a strategy, and that they've been asked to give an endless commitment to what they consider a hopeless enterprise," Hanson said. "In fact, there's a clear strategy, and it seems to be working."
Hanson spent a week in Iraq last month, and he plans to return for two weeks in May. He stays in touch via e-mail with a dozen or so US officers and soldiers who, he says, feel that they are slowly turning the tide in their favor.
Among the signs of progress Hanson ticks off: US-trained Iraqi troops are conducting a growing share of patrols, allowing more Americans to stay out of harm's way; as displayed in the air strikes this week, US warplanes are providing cover for the Iraqi forces; Iraqi units are no longer disbanding in the face of strong resistance; former insurgent strongholds are not being reclaimed by rebels soon after they are disbursed in firefights.
Hanson sees more violence in store for Iraq, but he said it is actually a sign that insurgents are losing ground.
"Al-Qaeda is getting very desperate as they see a democratic government emerge and an increasingly professional Iraqi security force," he said. "We're going to see a lot more frustration and desperation before this is over."
Army Lieutenant Colonel Isaiah Wilson III, who served as the chief war planner in Iraq for the 101st Airborne Division during the first year of the conflict, caused a stir in late 2004 when he suggested that the Pentagon never developed an operational plan for the occupation and reconstruction of Iraq after the initial invasion.
It is a view he still holds.
"We had a plan to win the war, but not evidently to win the peace that followed," Wilson said.
"It's very hard to build a nation inside Iraq when you're having a hard time preventing interference from outside your borders," Wilson said. "This is a long war, and we have to understand what that's going to mean. There is no decisive victory around the corner. I think we're going to be there for a longer period of time. If we're interested in a secure, democratic Iraq that is no threat to its neighbors, we're there for the long haul."
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