The US state department finds it much harder nowadays to be taken seriously when it criticises other countries for their use of torture and arbitrary arrest.
People the world over have been repelled by things that have been done here: things that are now associated with place-names like Abu Ghraib, Haditha, and Falluja.
Above all, we have seen how hard it is for the Americans to deal with a few thousand lightly armed volunteers.
Iraq war shows limits of US power
By John Simpson
World affairs editor, BBC News
Since the invasion of Iraq in 2003 I have spent almost a year of my life here, reporting on the conflict.
I have witnessed a disturbing amount of death and injury, and several of my friends have lost their lives. Others have become refugees and asylum-seekers.
It has lasted almost as long as World War II and cost almost as much.
Only one of its original aims, the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, has been achieved.
Of the other aims, one was unobtainable because Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction to be destroyed, and the other - bringing democracy to the Middle East - has been indefinitely postponed.
Nothing new in any of this, of course. Anti-war commentators have repeated it all again and again, while pro-war commentators mostly avoid mentioning any of it.
More importantly, the war has shown the limits of American power. It is clear the United States can only manage to fight two small wars at a time.
Iraq and Afghanistan have stretched the US armed forces almost to breaking point. America after the invasion of Iraq is no longer the superpower it was before.
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