The results of Wolfie's latest poll...

A Price Too High
by Bob Herbert

How long is it going to take for us to recognize that the war we so foolishly started in Iraq is a fiasco — tragic, deeply dehumanizing and ultimately unwinnable? How much time and how much money and how many wasted lives is it going to take?

At the United Nations yesterday, grieving diplomats spoke bitterly, but not for attribution, about the U.S.-led invasion and occupation. They said it has not only resulted in the violent deaths of close and highly respected colleagues, but has also galvanized the most radical elements of Islam.

"This is a dream for the jihad," said one high-ranking U.N. official. "The resistance will only grow. The American occupation is now the focal point, drawing people from all over Islam into an eye-to-eye confrontation with the hated Americans.

"It is very propitious for the terrorists," he said. "The U.S. is now on the soil of an Arab country, a Muslim country, where the terrorists have all the advantages. They are fighting in a terrain which they know and the U.S. does not know, with cultural images the U.S. does not understand, and with a language the American soldiers do not speak. The troops can't even read the street signs."
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Who wants to go to Iraq now?
by Robert Fisk

What United Nations nation would ever contemplate sending peacekeeping troops to Iraq now? The men who are attacking the United States' occupation army are ruthless, but they are not stupid. They know that President Bush is getting desperate, that he will do anything -- that he may even go to the dreaded Security Council for help -- to reduce U.S. military losses in Iraq.

But yesterday's attack on the U.N. headquarters in Baghdad has slammed shut the door to that escape route.
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A crisis of confidence: Attacks undermining U.S. agenda in Iraq

Former US diplomat says Rumsfeld led Bush to war

A former US diplomat who resigned over the Iraq (news - web sites) war described US President George W. Bush (news - web sites) as a "very weak" man led by the hand into battle by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
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How America Created a Terrorist Haven