Richard Armitage, who was US deputy secretary of state until January 2005, said: “The US has almost totally reversed the troop situation from two months ago. The danger is that this is too little and too late and that the US will turn into a bystander in an Iraqi civil war it does not have sufficient resources to prevent.”

"The rise in US troop levels comes as the world’s attention is on Lebanon but also coincides with a reported upsurge in anti-US sentiment in Baghdad’s Shia neighbourhoods following the launch of the US-backed Israeli campaign against Hizbollah."

Bush needs a government in place which will honor the oil contracts, and not demonstrate against the 4 permanent bases the US is building. There's a reason the US is building the largest embassy in the world in the Green Zone.

If they can't control the capital, they can't control the oil.

And, we're almost immune to Bush & Co. corruption. This is Condaleeza's State Department, by the way.

Audit Finds U.S. Hid Cost of Iraq Projects By JAMES GLANZ

"BAGHDAD, Iraq, July 29 — The State Department agency in charge of $1.4 billion in reconstruction money in Iraq used an accounting shell game to hide ballooning cost overruns on its projects there and knowingly withheld information on schedule delays from Congress, a federal audit released late Friday has found."

Arf