More troubling is that the Iraqi insurgency has been partly funded by oil-sector corruption.
That clearly the Iraqi insurgency started romping up in the spring of 2003 and just kept going since then.
At the same time, the Iraqi insurgency's apparent lack of a coherent programme other than violence has whittled away much outside support.
The raging Iraqi insurgency, crime and sectarian fighting "informed and complicated every decision" in funding such tasks as infrastructure building, security force development, job creation, economic reform and governance.
Perhaps most notably, Rumsfeld has survived reversals in the war in Iraq, including a post-invasion plan that's been widely criticized as inadequate, a persistent Iraqi insurgency and allegations of murder by U.S. troops in Iraq.
The State Department has said that Mitchell's trip will be followed by other U.S. missions -- including a delegation of U.S. military commanders who will discuss joint efforts to combat the Iraqi insurgency, officials said.
Rebels and U.S. officials say its core fighters are Syrians who fought in the Iraqi insurgency against Western-led coalition forces, and are now using their expertise and ties to al Qaeda in Iraq at home against the Assad regime.
In August, American commanders repeatedly drew parallels with the so-called Anbar Awakening, the rising of Sunni Iraqi tribes against foreign al Qaeda militants in the western Iraqi province of Anbar in 2007 a development that significantly weakened the Iraqi insurgency.
This past weekend, with US soldiers suffering one of the costliest months of the conflict and with the number of civilian deaths mounting, Vice President Cheney offered CNN's Larry King his own optimistic sense of an Iraqi insurgency on its last legs.
They are leaving the sectarian conflict to the Iraqi police and focusing on the insurgency.
In the best of circumstances, says Toby Dodge of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, the task of training enough Iraqi troops to withstand the current insurgency would take at least five years, probably longer.
Over the last several months there has been a perceived waning of his influence with the bulk of the insurgency really being carried out by Iraqi nationalists --whatever grouping you want to call them, Saddam loyalists, people who just don't to deal with the current situation in Iraq.
U.S. troops have battled a persistent insurgency since the invasion in March 2003 that toppled Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.
In Iraq, they have battled a brutal insurgency, trained new security forces and given the Iraqi people the opportunity to forge a better future.
He had plans in place before the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom to employ the Fedayeen paramilitary forces and to conduct an insurgency.
Casualty figures are still well below the worst levels of 2006 and 2007, when more than 2, 000 Iraqi civilians were being killed every month during the anti-US insurgency and in sectarian strife.
The president said that Iraqi troops are increasingly taking the lead in the fight against the insurgency, and that as they become more capable, the US will be able to bring troops home.
But it seems now, if you look at the Iraqi map, in the last 48 hours or so, the insurgency has spread to almost every single town, Baghdad, Kufa, Basra, Najaf, Nasiriya, Ramadi.
The conviction at the State Department and in various allied capitals that UN approval had to be obtained for action against Saddam Hussein bought the latter (and neighboring states) six-months to prepare the post-invasion insurgency and, it now appears settled, to move Iraqi weapons of mass destruction to Syria with Russian help.
The insurgency has a strategy which is persistently pursued of attacking the Iraqi police and army, not only recruits but those also actually in action and in uniform, to try to make it as hard as possible to stand up those forces.
Increasingly, our folks have already served one combat tour, so they've practiced counter-insurgency as an American and they are thus better able to advise Iraqi Security Forces on how to do it themselves.
It is an Iraqi tradition to celebrate by firing pistols or machineguns into the air, but Baghdad Military Operation Command issued warnings that some insurgency groups might take advantage of these shootings and conduct terrorist attacks against Iraqi security forces or civilians.
But tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians have also died since 2003 as a result of sectarian killings and a violent insurgency.
Though Sunnis appear to be uniting against the insurgency, that has not "translated into broad Sunni Arab support for the Iraqi government or widespread willingness to work with the Shia, " according to the NIE findings.
CNN: NIE: Intelligence community has tepid faith in Iraqi leaders
Also Tuesday, U.S. officials said the Iraqi government has agreed to a timetable addressing the critical issues facing the country, including the Sunni insurgency and the proliferation of sectarian militias.
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