The ultimate disaster for Iraq would be a quick US withdrawal
This could happen in two ways. George W Bush could lose the presidency in November 2004 to a Democrat campaigning on an anti-war ticket.
Alternatively, to prevent such an outcome, Mr Bush might hasten the transfer of power to an Iraqi regime ill-fit to govern.
Perhaps this is unlikely. But American unease over Iraq is obvious. A just-published Newsweek poll shows 49% of American voters think Bush has no thought-out strategy to stabilise Iraq and only 39% think he does. Amid reports of low army morale, 56% of voters think it's time to start bringing the troops home.
American worries over Iraq have been heightened by the leak of a memo in which Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld questions whether America is winning the war on terror, and says the US is having "mixed results" with al-Qaida.
There is more bad news in the report of the US-led weapons inspection team, which concludes that Saddam Hussein did not have an active nuclear weapons programme contrary to what the administration claimed before the war.
Another report, this one from the Senate Intelligence Committee, criticises the inadequacy of pre-war intelligence gathering: this could force the resignation of CIA chief George Tenet.
To make matters worse, an investigator appointed by Congress wants to see White House files in order to establish what the Bush administration knew about the terrorist threat before September 11. The investigator, a Republican, has threatened court action if Bush doesn't co-operate.
And there is the embarrassing 'Boykin' affair which has undermined Bush's attempts to distinguish between Islam and Islamic terrorism: the recently-appointed deputy undersecretary of defence for intelligence, Lt Gen William Boykin, told a meeting in Oregon last June that radical Islamists hated the US "because we're a Christian nation, because our foundation and our roots are Judeo-Christian".
Even worse for Bush are the voices suggesting that Iraq is becoming another Vietnam.
On Sunday, Bush's former rival Senator John McCain uttered the V word when he criticised the lack of credibility in the administration's attempts to put a positive spin on events in Iraq.
Sure enough, as Americans worry about the cost of reconstruction and the killing of their soldiers, protesters are starting to appear on the streets.
Bush's political opponents are taking their cue: Democrat hopefuls are pitching themselves at various points along the anti-war spectrum and the strongly anti-war Howard Dean has made most of the early running for the Democratic party nomination.
All this suggests that war in Iraq could yet be the mistake that costs Bush the presidency. That would delight plenty of people, especially those in the media who despise George W, and who are now eager to portray Iraq as a quagmire.
But while things may not be going swimmingly for the Americans, Iraq is not the new Vietnam.
The number of fatalities all round has been remarkably low, considering the dangers of going to war and the difficulties in rebuilding a country after years of dictatorship. It is also a fact that much of the resistance to the interim government is based around Baghdad. The rest of the country is relatively peaceful.
Recent intelligence reports indicate that the amounts of money offered to people for a successful attack on US. forces has increased from about $500 to between $3,000 and $5,000.
This suggests that elements coordinating the attacks are running out of people. It might also explain why softer civilian targets like the United Nations and the Red Cross are now coming under attack.
If Iraq isn't a quagmire, why the American unease? The answer comes down to four things: politics, revenge, money and McDonald's. The over-riding factor is politics. Democrats want to play up any possible source of embarrassment to Bush and right now anti-war looks like a vote-getter.
REVENGE? Large sections of the media don't like Bush, and his Iraq troubles provide an opportunity to say "I told you so. This guy can't cope. Vote Democrat".
The money factor is obvious: Americans don't like being asked to shell out 87 billion for rebuilding Afghanistan and Iraq, and Bush faces opposition from both Democrats and Republicans on this.
But perhaps the McDonald's factor is the most significant: Americans wanted a takeaway war quick in, quick out, shock & awe, low casualties, low cost.
The US couldn't quite deliver this.
Casualties are low, but mounting. Even if Iraq is nothing like Vietnam, that's not how it seems as, each day, journalists report another US military fatality.
Yet even those who opposed the Iraq war can agree that America should stand by its commitments. America and its international allies have committed billions of dollars to reconstruction. That will take time, and only the presence of the US military will guarantee an Iraqi government the stability it needs.
Recent events also show the American cause in Iraq was more honourable than its critics claimed. There is no sign yet of any big oil dividend for the US, although some payback to the donor countries from Iraq's rich oil reserves would not be unjustifiable.
And Monday's suicide bombing tells its own story. You can't get a more innocent target than the Red Cross.
Of the 35 people killed, 26 were civilians, eight were Iraqi police and one was a US soldier. The people who did this were terrorists pure and simple, some of them coming in from neighbouring states to fight their 'holy war' against America. They have no regard for innocent Iraqi civilians.
Suggestions, therefore, that the Americans stirred up a hornets' nest by ousting Saddam are rather unworthy. Quite clearly there are some bad hornets out there, and sooner or later they were going to cause trouble for innocent people.
George W Bush now has a race against time. His administration must establish and sponsor a new system of government in Iraq which gives stability to the country and respects people's basic rights. But his problem is, for how long more will the American public give him the backing he needs?
There are real dangers here. An opinion poll suggests that 33% of Iraqis want an Islamic republic, while just 30% favour a Western-style democracy.
With a new constitution to be drafted for Iraq over the coming months, Iraq's administrator, Paul Bremer, and the US State Department, have reportedly given up on the idea of secular democracy in Iraq.
The presence of a number of avowed Islamists on the Iraqi governing council, at least one of whom has terrorist links, is a big worry for those concerned about human rights, equality for women and freedom of religious practice for the Assyrian Christians and other minorities.
After all that has happened, it seems unthinkable that the US would not push for the inclusion of minority rights in any new constitution. But it all depends on the folks back home.
The fear must be that if Bush faces too much domestic pressure over Iraq, then core values such as freedom and human rights could get left behind in the rush to get the hell out.
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