I'm a Brit, now resident in Texas. Being ex-military but now too old for military service, I worked in Iraq for a year as a security contractor. The Iraqis I met and worked with are superb people - friendly, hospitable, earnest, proud yet charmingly humble - and as much as they appreciated being free of a tyrant, the common question was "When are you going to leave Iraq?"

I tried to make the point that we'd love to let them run their own country - and without the insurgents, we'd have no excuse to stay.

My advice would be to continue to help the Iraqis crush any insurgency groups, continue handing over the provinces to Iraqi control once the local commanders prove that they're capable of keeping control - and absolutely appoint someone whose function is to ensure that money goes to the right places and not into private pockets.