The ruthlessly efficient White House spin machine may have met its match in Iraq. After months of upbeat talk about the march toward democratic government and an insurgency in retreat, a more sober tone has emerged in recent days.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice rushed to Iraq May 15 to press the Iraqi government to reach out to the disempowered Sunni minority and dampen the danger of a sectarian civil war between Shias and Sunnis.

President George W. Bush spoke on May 18 on the need for patience in facing the inevitable setbacks in the transition from tyranny.

Senior US military leaders also cautioned this week that the insurgency is proving more resilient than seemed the case a month ago, and that Iraqi security forces remain largely ineffective.

This realism is refreshing and welcome. The point is not to feed the advocates of retreat from Iraq. Rather, there is a deep need to prepare the American people for the long and costly haul that remains ahead. There will be many twists and turns in the tunnel before any light is visible. 

The shift in tone was compelled by a surge of violence after a lull that followed the Iraqi election at the end of January. In the past two weeks, nearly 450 people have been killed in Iraq, mostly in the Sunni-populated areas.

The administration points a finger at foreign fighters based in Syria for this escalation, fuelled by a rash of suicide bombings. US officials see this as a desperate attempt to undermine the formation of the new Iraqi government. They believe the violence may isolate the insurgents and encourage Sunni leaders to join the government.

Most analysts share the view that the insurgents aim to prevent the Shia-led coalition that won the election from establishing its authority. But there is great scepticism about the characterisation of the enemy as mainly external to Iraq.

In a lengthy and detailed report on "Iraq's Evolving Insurgency" issued this week, Anthony Cordesman, one of the most respected analysts of the war, presents a sobering picture of the enemy.

There is not one insurgency but many insurgencies, Cordesman, a supporter of the war but a critic of the administration's handling of it, told me. There are Islamist extremists, partly foreign and partly domestic, interacting with local and tribal elements. And there is a secular Sunni Arab insurgency, simplistically labeled Baathist, referring to the followers of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein.

Even the numbers of insurgents are hard to pin down, said the report, issued by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Official data on numbers of casualties and attacks tends to undercount both, it said.

While the tempo of operations by US and Iraqi forces has increased, "the insurgents and terrorists have grown in capability and size". They have learned a great deal about how to use their weapons, plan attacks and hit soft and hard targets to produce a very specific political effect, the report said.

"US and Iraqi efforts to thwart insurgent attacks - while tireless - are also sometimes hollow victories," Cordesman wrote. The insurgency continues to draw on a deep well of support among the Sunni population.

"We have put considerable pressure on the insurgents," he told me, "but we still can't say we're winning or that the risks have been reduced."

The greatest challenge remains to create an effective government in Baghdad and to avoid a sectarian civil war. The US is pressing for inclusion of Sunnis and warning against purges of former regime elements in the army and police who are key to the counterinsurgency campaign.

The new government, largely composed of Shias and Kurds, agrees with this in principle.

"But it is very clear Shias and Kurds are extremely hostile to Sunni power and fear Sunni dominance," observes Graham Fuller, a former senior CIA analyst of this region. "And that's not a misplaced fear."

Fuller foresees a "lurch back and forth" between authoritarianism and democracy. "It is almost inconceivable to think one democratic interval is enough to set the country permanently in the right direction," he told me.

The administration needs to tell Americans the truth, or risk losing their support. As Cordesman put it, almost pleadingly, "the spin has to stop".

(Daniel Sneider is foreign-affairs writer for the Mercury News. He can be reached at dsneider@mercurynews.com)