The death toll mounts, and I think I understand now what the strategy of the insurgency is.
By provoking sectarian violence everything the Americans try to do there will be frustrated, and when the Americans leave the killing will stop and they can blame it all on the infidel.
But I think the Sunnis have severely miscalculated. When we leave, the Shia death squads and militias will extract a gruesome revenge on Sunnis, guilty as well as innocent. And no doubt the US will be blamed as well for that. The United States created this mess, and it has the responsiblity to clean it up. Normally, I would say we were morally obligated to stay iin Iraq until normalcy was restored. But I believe that this is now simply no longer possible. The issue is no longer whether we should, but whether we can. I say we cannot.

What I do find interesting is how different reporters describe the situation so differently. Depending on who you listen to, its either getting better every day or it's a bloodbath deteriorating into worse by the hour. I'm not there to tell for myself but it's sad that the situation has gotten to the point where I believe the BBC more than I do my own government. I've been lied to by this government one time too many.

One thing is for sure, and neither side can deny it, close to a hundred Americans die every month, not much as far as a typical war is concerned. But a 100 Iraqi civilians die every day, and that sounds like a very typical civil war to me. It's time to bring the boys home.