Why U.S. troops won't be coming home from Iraq anytime soon.

By Fred Kaplan
Posted Tuesday, May 10, 2005, at 11:03 AM PT

U.S. soldiers are stuck in a catch-22

Now that an Iraqi government is taking form, however haltingly, how much longer will American troops have to stay? Judging from the data in two recent official U.S. reports, they probably won't be coming home soon.

Read together, the two documents—the latest quarterly report by the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, just released today, and the State Department's "Iraq Weekly Status Report" dated May 4—suggest that the Iraqi leaders have a long way to go (by some measures, as long as they've ever had) before they can rebuild their country, secure order, stabilize their regime, and protect their borders without a large American military presence.