Fiddling While Baghdad Burns

So Donald Rumsfeld tells us New Enemies Demand New Thinking. Well he's right and that is evident in Iraq. It looks like it's a new Secretary of Defense that is needed.

Pentagon Gives Gloomy Iraq Report

Sectarian violence is spreading in Iraq and the security problems have become more complex than at any time since the U.S. invasion in 2003, a Pentagon report said Friday.
In a notably gloomy report to Congress, the Pentagon reported that illegal militias have become more entrenched, especially in Baghdad neighborhoods where they are seen as providers of both security and basic social services.

The report described a rising tide of sectarian violence, fed in part by interference from neighboring Iran and Syria and driven by a "vocal minority" of religious extremists who oppose the idea of a democratic Iraq.

Death squads targeting mainly Iraqi civilians are a growing problem, heightening the risk of civil war, the report said.

"Death squads and terrorists are locked in mutually reinforcing cycles of sectarian strife," the report said, adding that the Sunni-led insurgency "remains potent and viable" even as it is overshadowed by the sect-on-sect killing.

"Conditions that could lead to civil war exist in Iraq, specifically in and around Baghdad, and concern about civil war within the Iraqi civilian population has increased in recent months," the report said. It is the latest in a series of quarterly reports required by Congress to assess economic, political and security progress.

Yes Mr Rumsfeld, we need some "new thinking". Everything that you and this incompetent administration has done has been a failure. Everything that you and this administration have said about the situation in Iraq has been wrong. It's obvious that there will be no "new thinking" until you and the rest of this administration are replaced. The problem isn't those who are critical of the policy, it's the policy itself that's the problem.