U.S. soldiers visit a market near their camp in the rural town of Nahrawan southeast of Baghdad November 8, 2007. Battling an insurgency, wrote T.E. Lawrence, the legendary "Lawrence of Arabia" who fought in the Arab revolt against the Ottoman Empire almost a century ago, is "messy and slow, like eating soup with a knife". It's a lesson the U.S. military has learned painfully in Iraq, a messy war dragging into its fifth year with a mounting toll in Iraqi and American lives. Stung by setbacks, Washington this year installed a new commander, General David Petraeus, to oversee a new approach to counter-insurgency. To match feature IRAQ/SOUP. Picture taken November 8, 2007. REUTERS/Erik de Castro (IRAQ)
REUTERS/ERIK DE CASTRO