Can you look someone in the eye if you're on the phone--or just peer into their soul? Oh, and I guess it's a good thing that there's no deadline (no pun intended) on having the Iraqi government stop the violence:
Four days of sectarian slaughter killed at least 91 people by Monday in Balad, a town near a major U.S. air base an hour's drive north of the capital. Elsewhere, 60 Iraqis died in attacks and 16 tortured bodies were found.
The U.S. command said seven American troops died in fighting a day earlier. That raised the U.S. toll to 58 killed in the first two weeks of October, a pace that if continued would make the month the worst for coalition forces since 107 U.S. and 10 British soldiers died in January 2005.
Iraqi deaths also are running at a high rate. According to an Associated Press count, 708 Iraqis have been reported killed in war-related violence this month, or just over 44 a day, compared to a daily average of more than 27 since the AP began tracking deaths in April 2005.
A surge in sectarian bloodshed and jump in U.S. casualties coincide with the run-up to the American midterm elections in which the Bush administration's handling of the Iraq war has become a key issue.
Ah, yet another election...that will have absolutely no effect, unfortunately, on the mind numbing chaos and violence that the administration's brought about in Mesopotamia.
Enjoy your legacy, Shrub: as Billmon recently said, it takes "a rare combination [of ignorance, arrogance and incompetence] to take a situation like Saddam's Iraq and make it worse."
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