Feel the progress:
“The message is clear, and the message confirms the sectarian differences,” said Fadhil Sharih, a leader of the Sadr movement. “It seems clear that it’s been moving toward the direction of civil war.”
U.S. and Iraqi government leaders have argued that the 150,000-strong foreign troop presence has kept the country from descending into full-scale civil war. But many Iraqi officials fear the threshold has been crossed.
“What is happening in Iraq is a disaster and a tragedy,” Adnan Dulaimi, a Sunni Arab leader, said in an interview.
“It’s bloodshed and killing of the innocents, killing the elderly and women and children. It’s mass killings. It’s nothing less than an undeclared civil war.”
Many members of Iraq’s political class spoke gravely of the massacres and bombings of the last few days, even as two U.S. Cabinet officials visiting Baghdad’s heavily fortified Green Zone this week touted Iraq as a potential bonanza for private investors.
. . .
The surge in violence has terrified residents of Baghdad and other mixed Sunni and Shiite areas. The Baghdad airport has been flooded with Iraqis of modest means seeking to escape even temporarily the country’s upswing in sectarian slayings.
According to a U.N. study based on Health Ministry statistics, 2,669 Iraqi civilians were killed in May and 3,149 were killed in June. And this month, the violence appears to be accelerating, particularly in the Baghdad area that is the target of a sweeping security crackdown aimed at quelling the violence. U.S. and Iraqi troops launched the sweep, to great fanfare, after a visit in mid-June by President Bush.
What a mess. How can we expect a effective reaction to this situation when leaders in Washington refuse to even acknowledge reality?