Condi Rice is so five minutes ago. As we write this, the news is coming in fast and furious from Iraq:

In an ominous turn, kidnappers seized 13 foreign hostages and threatened to burn three Japanese captives alive if Tokyo did not withdraw its troops.....TV pictures aired in the Middle East by the Al-Jazeera satellite network and rebroadcast during prime time in Japan showed the three Japanese hostages - two aid workers and a journalist - wide-eyed and moaning in terror as their black-clad captors held knives to their throats, shouting God is Great in Arabic.

Two Arab aid workers from Jerusalem - one who had once lived in Georgia - were abducted in a separate incident, and a Syrian-born Canadian humanitarian aid worker for the International Rescue Committee was taken hostage Wednesday by a local militia in Najaf. Eight South Korean Christian missionaries were seized by gunmen outside Baghdad. Seven were freed after one of them escaped, the Foreign Ministry in Seoul said.

The radical Shi'ite Militia has seized control of two cities in the south:

In the south, the al-Sadr's al-Mahdi Army militia had full control in the cities of Kut and Kufa and in the central part of Najaf. Police in the cities have abandoned their stations or stood aside as the gunmen roam the streets.

The U.S. death toll is at 40 for this week alone, six in the past 48 hours. Friday is the first anniversary of the fall of Saddam Hussein.

Al Jazeera's headline story: Fierce Falluja fighting recalls Vietnam.

Sen. Robert Byrd delivered a speech today on the floor of the Senate calling for an exit door in Iraq:

It is staggeringly clear that the Administration did not understand the consequences of invading Iraq a year ago, and it is staggeringly clear that the Administration has no effective plan to cope with the aftermath of the war and the functional collapse of Iraq. It is time -- past time -- for the President to remedy that omission and to level with the American people about the magnitude of mistakes made and lessons learned. America needs a roadmap out of Iraq, one that is orderly and astute, else more of our men and women in uniform will follow the fate of Tennyson's doomed Light Brigade

by TChris

According to a statement issued by U.S. Marines, rockets were fired at, and a 500 pound bomb was dropped upon, the mosque compound in Fallujah that was the subject of a posting earlier today. But a statement released by the Marines says that "one insurgent was killed and that there were no reports of civilian casualties."

Contrast this report:

U.S. marines in a fierce battle for this Sunni Muslim stronghold bombed a mosque compound filled with worshippers Wednesday and witnesses said as many as 40 people were killed.

An Associated Press reporter saw cars ferrying the dead and wounded from the mosque.

So which is it? One dead insurgent and no civilian casualties after Marines bombed a mosque compound out of "military necessity"? Or 40 dead after Marines bombed a mosque compound filled with worshippers?

The truth may get sorted out eventually, but the incident remains bad press for an occupying country trying to gain the support of Iraqi citizens. Even more troubling, from the standpoint of winning the hearts and minds of Iraqis, is this statement in the AP report about a different incident:

Sixteen children and eight women were reported killed when warplanes struck four houses late Tuesday, said Hatem Samir, a Fallujah Hospital official.

Addendum: William Beeman explains why the Bush administration's approach to the governance of Iraq hasn't worked, isn't working, and won't work after the transition to sovereignty. His thesis -- that the administration failed to win the confidence of the Iraqi people in the early days of the occupation, when it might have been possible to gain trust by providing adequately for basic needs -- is sound. It should be obvious even to the Bush administration that policing a country by killing the innocent will not inspire trust or good will.

by TChris

In an effort to strike back after four American private security guards were killed in Falluja last week, American and Iraqi security forces yesterday "began to push inward in search of rebels and suspects connected to the killing." The effort is unlikely to win support among the Iraqi people, however, in light of reports that a U.S. helicopter fired three missles into a mosque as worshipers gathered for afternoon prayers.

Witnesses say that more than 40 people were killed in the attack.

Update: 12 Marines were killed today.

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Original Post

The war that keeps on killing.

Including casualties Monday and Tuesday, at least 18 American Marines and soldiers and 99 Iraqis have been killed since Sunday. In the same period, a Salvadoran soldier and one from Ukraine also were killed.

In a series of U.S. television interviews Tuesday, L. Paul Bremer, the top civilian administrator in Iraq, conceded not all was going smoothly as the coalition approached a June 30 handover of sovereignty to the Iraqis.

Nonetheless, Bremer says, June 30 is the date and Bush is sticking to it.

We missed this a few months ago from Mother Jones, The Lie Factory, by Robert Dreyfuss and Jason Vest:

Only weeks after 9/11, the Bush administration set up a secret Pentagon unit to create the case for invading Iraq. Here is the inside story of how they pushed disinformation and bogus intelligence and led the nation to war.

It seems even Congress is reading their report now. Here's a little more, but go read the whole thing.

As the U.S. is poised to deliver its promised revenge for the horrible deaths of Americans in Fallujah last week, the Dreyfuss Report says:

Where is the Bush administration? They haven't a clue. The unconscionable war between neocon imperialists and conservative realists that has split the administration since Day One goes on. "This administration, as far as I can tell is at odds with itself, being pulled apart," says Sen. Joe Biden, the Delaware Democrat, in an interview with The New York Times today. "One portion [is] saying we're going to keep [Iraq] under our tent, the other half saying, 'Let's give it to the UN.'" And not only are they still split, but the main focus of the White House is not on Iraq but on Richard Clarke and the 9/11 commission, which will hear from Condi on Thursday. Within days, the United States could find itself fighting a full-scale war of survival in Iraq, and there isn't a ghost of a plan emerging from Washington.

by TChris

With all the bad news reported from Iraq, the Office of Strategic Communications has a difficult task.

One of the main goals of the Office of Strategic Communications - known as stratcom - is to ensure Americans see the positive side of the Bush administration's invasion, occupation and reconstruction of Iraq, where 600 U.S. soldiers have died and a deadly insurgency thrives.

Finding the positive side of chaotic violence is a challenge, but the administration found loyal supporters to do the job.

Dan Senor, a former press secretary for Spencer Abraham, the Michigan Republican who's now Energy Secretary, heads the office that includes a large number of former Bush campaign workers, political appointees and ex-Capitol Hill staffers. More than one-third of the U.S. civilian workers in the press office have GOP ties, running an enterprise that critics see as an outpost of Bush's re-election effort with Iraq a top concern.

by TChris

The number of American soldiers who have died in Iraq reached 600 on Sunday. One of the bloodiest gun battles, in Najaf, south of Baghdad, lasted three hours. The battle was part of a "coordinated Shiite militia uprising against the American-led occupation," a significant change from previous attacks "by fighters drawn from Iraq's Sunni Muslim minority rather than majority Shi'ites."

Correction: The number of American service members killed in Iraq is said to be at least 610.

by TChris

The Bush administration didn't have much of a plan for Iraq after driving Saddam Hussein from power. If the administration has a plan for Iraq after the country regains sovereignty on June 30, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Richard Lugar would like to know about it.

Less than three months before the scheduled handover of sovereignty by the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority, Lugar told ABC's "This Week" that the Bush administration had not advised Congress on its plans for Iraq once CPA administrator Paul Bremer leaves.

Lugar worries that the transfer of power as scheduled could lead to civil war -- a possibility suggested by increasing levels of violence, including these clashes on Sunday that killed seven U.S. soldiers and wounded two dozen more.

More on today's violence here.

Both the Independent and the Guardian are reporting that President Bush asked Tony Blair to back him in removing Saddam from power just 9 days after 9/11. The Guardian article reports the two had a secret pact.

President George Bush first asked Tony Blair to support the removal of Saddam Hussein from power at a private White House dinner nine days after the terror attacks of 11 September, 2001. According to Sir Christopher Meyer, the former British Ambassador to Washington, who was at the dinner when Blair became the first foreign leader to visit America after 11 September, Blair told Bush he should not get distracted from the war on terror's initial goal - dealing with the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. Bush, claims Meyer, replied by saying: 'I agree with you, Tony. We must deal with this first. But when we have dealt with Afghanistan, we must come back to Iraq.' Regime change was already US policy.

Meyer says Blair "said nothing to demur." The genesis of these articles is a 25,000 word piece in the May issue of Vanity Fair.

by TChris

One member of the Bush administration, at least, is capable of admitting the possibility of error. It's taken Colin Powell a year to say it, but he now acknowledges that he may have been wrong when he told the United Nations in February 2003 that two trailers in Iraq were used for weapons of mass destruction.