Specialist Emmitt Delong’s wife has cancer but he has not asked to be sent home from Iraq. The 26-year-old soldier from Columbus, Ohio, wants to stay with his colleagues from the 2-12th Cavalry who are working to pacify the district of Ghazaliyah in West Baghdad. “I can honestly say we are making progress here, no matter what angle you look at it from,” he said.

Captain David Bradley, of Task Force 1-77, has spent less than a month with his wife in the two years since they were married, but is in no hurry to see US soldiers like himself withdrawn from Ramadi, the newly peaceful capital of Anbar province. “It’s a moot point whether we should have come here in the first place but having done so we owe it to the Iraqis to finish the job,” he said.

It is no fun being a US soldier in Iraq right now. They endure daytime temperatures in excess of 110 degrees while wearing body armour. They live in spartan accommodation. Many are on their third or fourth tours, and some of those tours now last 15 months. But as Congress starts deliberating today on whether to demand a timetable for withdrawing from Iraq, a surprising number of US soldiers say they should be allowed to complete their mission.

There are many exceptions, of course. “I think we’ve done a lot of good, but it’s time to go,” Sergeant Shana Krenzer, 26, said as she smoked a cigarette outside her office at Camp Stryker near Baghdad airport.

But numerous soldiers approached by The Times in recent days said General Petraeus’s arrival as America’s top commander in Iraq in January had raised morale and given them a fresh sense of purpose and direction.

“People back home just don’t see the progress we’re making or they would not want us to be withdrawn,” said Staff Sergeant Ramond Piper, 29, from Youngstown, Ohio.

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