From The Niagara Falls Reporter
By Bill Gallagher

Iraq is disintegrating. That is certain. The only uncertainty now is the extent of the disaster, the reach of the tragedy. More than 3,700 Iraqi civilians were killed in October, the highest number since the U.S. invasion. November’s numbers are sure to be worse.

President George W. Bush’s mad experiment in nation-building, his arrogant move to use military force to try to brand Iraq as a Western-style democracy, is a failure. The bullying backfired and has made the Middle East more dangerous and our nation less secure.

No one has a simple solution, simply because there isn’t one. James A. Baker will offer his slant to the full Iraqi Study Group this week and the former secretary of state will try to spin a bipartisan plan to rescue the reckless “Bring ‘em on” Bush from the horrible mess he has created.

Baker, his boys and former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor will use a lot of diplomatic language to explain a strategy that will essentially outline a measured extrication of U.S. forces tied to some nebulous benchmarks the administration can say are met no matter what happens. The military can do little to quell the sectarian violence, which has all the markings of civil war, in spite of the futile denials of the White House.

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