Friday on a flight from Baltimore to Atlanta I sat next to a couple of Marines on their way home for 2 weeks of mid-rotation R&R. They were pumped about going home but they were NOT happy campers. They freely talked about the situation in Iraq for the whole flight.
They are in the 1st Battalion, 2nd Marines "supporting" one of the better Iraqi National Guard units about 30 miles south of Baghdad. According to these guys the Iraqi Guard is close to useless. They only do what the marines tell them to do and do that only sometimes. Recently a police barracks was attacked and they staged in camp for more than an hour waiting for permission from higher up to respond. By the time they got to the barracks it was all over.
They are under strict orders not to fire unless they have definitely identified the enemy and simply carrying a weapon does not qualify. A target has to be witnessed firing at coalition troupes. In the 6 months they have been in Iraq they have had 50 roadside bomb attacks on at their convoys and defused another 11. Mortar attacks are a daily occurrence. They think that the administration is more concerned about Iraqi lives than their own.
The really disturbing part is that they believe that they were lied to about the reasons for being there and that we will have to be there forever to keep the lid on.