Who can stop the Iraq bloodshed?

A US soldier at the scene of a suicide truck bomb which struck a Mosul police stattion. Photograph: Tony Overman/AP

Amid reports in the US that the Bush administration has given the Iraqi government a timetable to halt sectarian violence, bloggers raise a pertinent question.

If the US, with 120,000 troops can't do the job, how can prime minister Nuri al-Maliki's fledgling government, whose writ barely runs outside Baghdad's green zone, cope?