The Bush Administration knows popular. At the time of writing total reported American deaths are fewer than 250. This is not very many for a nine month period. But it is edging towards the threshold of what American public opinion finds acceptable.
Television cameras are now banned from barracks when American coffins are being ceremonially unloaded from planes. This is in addition to a huge amount of media self-censorship. British and American camera crews don't bother to record images of the dead, dying and mutilated because they know they end up on the cutting room floor.
Richard Armitage, US Deputy Secretary of State, says of the current situation "we're involved in an insurgency and that's pretty close to war." The Iraqi resistance is starting to achieve much better results than the professional army did under Saddam's leadership.
It is now regularly shooting down American helicopters and engaging in firefights with the occupation forces using a range of conventional weapons. It is also conducting war as a cottage industry, making its own bombs and booby traps. One can also see that there are a number of strands in this resistance and that Islamists are conducting a more indiscriminate terrorist campaign.
The Americans have adopted the Israeli Army's methods for winning hearts and minds. When their forces are attacked American soldiers have a tendency to panic and open fire wildly; F16 jets drop 500lb bombs and they use tanks to shell buildings they "thought were used" by attackers.
They arrest large numbers of people, treat them roughly and have only the vaguest notions of what is offensive to Iraqis. Even the police officers who collaborate with them to earn $150 a month in a society with 65-70 per cent unemployment feel humiliated and are prepared to say so to foreign journalists.
A civil war is now breaking out in the American ruling class as a result. No American administration has ever questioned its right to go to someone else's country and change the government. But the Bush Republicans had a project of quickly taking control of strategically important oil producing regions through a series of quick wars.
This is disintegrating around its creators' ears. Polls are now starting to indicate that most Americans no longer support the occupation of Iraq.
A film, Uncovered: The Whole Truth About the Iraq War has interviews with a former aide to Richard Nixon, a former director of the CIA and George Bush's Secretary to the Army.
Chas Freeman, who served as father Bush's ambassador to Saudi Arabia said "we have been neo-conned into applying a school of thought about foreign affairs that has failed everywhere it has been tried". People like this don't emerge from the shadows if a ruling class is united around what it is doing.
Suddenly Bush is starting to look vulnerable. The discussion in the United States is now shifting to examine the truth of the reasons that were offered for war. Some of his officials have broken federal law by leaking the identity of a CIA agent and this may result in a criminal investigation.
The Democrat presidential candidate Wesley Clarke, who served as a NATO commander in Bosnia, is staking his bid on his military credentials and his opposition to the Republican war.
The Rumsfeld-Cheney dream of the United States dominating the world's oil supply through its army looks like it will be smashed by the reluctance of ordinary Americans to support this imperial adventure. The success of Europe's anti-war movements in stopping their governments' support for new wars coupled with the Iraqi resistance, with its rocket propelled grenades and bombs made in the garden shed intensify this crisis.