More pessimism, brought to you by USAid.

Things aren't going very well in Iraq. But don't take my word for it. Take the US foreign aid agency's.
Now, I'd expect that the White House is more optimistic about the war. They're optimistic about everything. This is a president who declared that the world's biggest fuckup was doing "one heck of a job." The glass isn't half empty, it's half full--all full, and anybody who says otherwise hates America.
According to USAid, our counter-insurgency measures aren't working because there's not just one kind of insurgent. It's not, as Bush likes to paint it, us versus the terrorists. It's Iraqi vs Iraqis vs a different kind of Iraqi. There's the usual Sunni/Shi'ite mess, of course, but the different tribes are also at war with each other.
There's more. Foreign jihadist groups are flooding in. Ironically, al-Qaida is now becoming a problem in Iraq. Zarqawi's group isn't, as the Pentagon claims, "in disarray." The insurgent attacks are damaging Iraq's economy and infrastructure, criminals have free reign, it's just a big mess.
And the thing is, anybody who knows anything about Iraq could have told you that shit like this was going to happen. The idea that we would be greeted as liberators is laughable. It's possible that we'd have been welcomed by certain groups of Iraqis, but not all of them.