Iraq bad, growing worse

There was lots of news about Iraq today. Sydney Blumenthal has a piece in the Guardian with the rather blunt headline: Far graver than Vietnam. Blumenthal records the growing rift in US military leadership over Iraq.

On what does he base that conclusion? Perhaps it's because the Green Zone is no longer secure, as reported by the Financial Times. Or perhaps it is because the U.S. intelligence forecast paints a dismal picture for positive outcomes in Iraq. The best we can hope for, according to the report, is a maintenance of a violent status quo. The worst is all out civil war.

The Bush President continues to make sunny assessments of Iraq, but many Senators, both Republican and Democrat, are no longer buying it. In fact, they are uniting to demand answers. They are responding to the administration's request to shift a few billion dollars from reconstruction to security. That should tell us something. The Christian Science Monitor analyzes the move as an effort to achieve short term objectives that will lead to effective elections.