Staying the course in the quagmire

Anyone else thinking about an exit strategy?

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Sept. 20 - Insurgents have killed nine American troops and security officers in four attacks across Iraq, including a suicide-bomb blast that took the life of a State Department security official and three security contractors as their diplomatic convoy left the regional United States embassy office in Mosul.
One attack in Mosul on Monday morning killed the State Department security official and three private security guards. It was followed later that day by two bombings near the restive city of Ramadi in Anbar Province that each killed two soldiers, the American military reported. This afternoon, an American military policeman was also reported killed by a homemade bomb 75 miles north of Baghdad.
The violence in northern Iraq's largest city came as British and Iraqi officials traded accusations over the British military's siege of an Iraqi police station in Basra to liberate two British soldiers being held by the police.

The Times clears up some of the confusion about that last bit.