What have we done to Iraq? [Update]

God help us.

An average of more than 100 civilians per day were killed in Iraq last month, the highest monthly tally of violent deaths since the fall of Baghdad, the United Nations reported today.

[There's more.]

The death toll, drawn from Iraqi government agencies, was the most precise measurement of civilian deaths provided by any government organization since the invasion and represented a dramatic increase over daily media reports.
United Nations officials also said that the number of violent deaths had been steadily increasing since at least last summer. In the first six months of this year, the civilian death toll jumped more than 77 percent, from 1,778 in January to 3,149 in June, the organization said.

Bush, at a press conference June 14, after returning from Iraq:

Q Is the tide turning in Iraq?

THE PRESIDENT: I think -- tide turning -- see, as I remember -- I was raised in the desert, but tides kind of -- it's easy to see a tide turn -- did I say those words?

Q (Inaudible) --

THE PRESIDENT: Yes, I probably ought to then reflect on those words and think that -- I sense something different happening in Iraq. The progress will be steady toward a goal that has clearly been defined. In other words, I hope there's not an expectation from people that, all of a sudden, there's going to be zero violence -- in other words, it's just not going to be the case.

Can it be possible that even he's beginning to realize what he's done?

Update: Here's what gets me. He has incessantly referred to Iraq as "the central front" in the war on terror, but if you follow the link to the press conference above, you'll find that he repeatedly makes it just a part of his war.

See, Iraq is a part of the global war on terror. It's not "the" global war on terror, it's a theater in the global war on terror. And if we fail in Iraq, it's going to embolden al Qaeda types.

[snip]

And I want to repeat something: Iraq is not the only part of this war. It's an essential part, but it's not the only part of the war on terror.

[snip]

The American people have got to understand that Iraq is a part of the war on terror.

To me that sounds like he wants to distance himself from it while still fighting it. What say you?

[Crossposted at Nitpicker.]

•  6,000 since May

  An astounding number.

  Combine that with the number of people fleeing Iraq, and the violence may soon have to ease -- there will be no one left.

  by Devilstower on Tue Jul 18, 2006 at 03:25:35 PM PDT

  •  Only the most successful

    thugs will be left. The most violent and intractable.

    by melvin on Tue Jul 18, 2006 at 03:29:41 PM PDT

•  3149 civilians dead in June

  Great. Just great.

  I think -- tide turning -- see, as I remember -- I was raised in the desert, but tides kind of -- it's easy to see a tide turn -- did I say those words?

  Shakespeare would be tongue-tied, considering this utter fool.

  by bumblebums on Tue Jul 18, 2006 at 03:26:04 PM PDT

•  nope, he's clueless

  Two cities in Afganistan taken over by the Taliban, tens if not hundreds of thousands of Iraqi's dead, 2500+ US solders dead and how many times that wounded.  I read today that Turkey may be thining about invading northern Iraq to stop uprisings that will affect them.  Yep, turned a corner, democracy is blossoming, peace and prosperity are right around the corner.  Whatever the administration is smoking, they ought to give us all some so we can endure this stupidity.

  by Hard to Port on Tue Jul 18, 2006 at 03:29:03 PM PDT

  •  thinking, thinking. dammit, check before posting

    by Hard to Port on Tue Jul 18, 2006 at 03:29:40 PM PDT

•  Remember

  How the term "Salvador Option" was openly batted around a ways back? This isn't tinfoil talking here, it was all above board discussion. I mean, read the article. Newsweek:

  ‘The Salvador Option’
  The Pentagon may put Special-Forces-led assassination or kidnapping teams in Iraq

  By Michael Hirsh and John Barry
  Newsweek
  Updated: 8:59 p.m. ET Jan 14, 2005

  Jan. 8 - What to do about the deepening quagmire of Iraq? The Pentagon’s latest approach is being called "the Salvador option"—and the fact that it is being discussed at all is a measure of just how worried Donald Rumsfeld really is. "What everyone agrees is that we can’t just go on as we are," one senior military officer told NEWSWEEK. "We have to find a way to take the offensive against the insurgents. Right now, we are playing defense. And we are losing." Last November’s operation in Fallujah, most analysts agree, succeeded less in breaking "the back" of the insurgency—as Marine Gen. John Sattler optimistically declared at the time—than in spreading it out.

  Now, NEWSWEEK has learned, the Pentagon is intensively debating an option that dates back to a still-secret strategy in the Reagan administration’s battle against the leftist guerrilla insurgency in El Salvador in the early 1980s. Then, faced with a losing war against Salvadoran rebels, the U.S. government funded or supported "nationalist" forces that allegedly included so-called death squads directed to hunt down and kill rebel leaders and sympathizers. Eventually the insurgency was quelled, and many U.S. conservatives consider the policy to have been a success—despite the deaths of innocent civilians and the subsequent Iran-Contra arms-for-hostages scandal. (Among the current administration officials who dealt with Central America back then is John Negroponte, who is today the U.S. ambassador to Iraq. Under Reagan, he was ambassador to Honduras. There is no evidence, however, that Negroponte knew anything about the Salvadoran death squads or the Iran-Contra scandal at the time. The Iraq ambassador, in a phone call to NEWSWEEK on Jan. 10, said he was not involved in military strategy in Iraq. He called the insertion of his name into this report "utterly gratuitous.")

  Well that was a year and a half ago. I'm not going too far out on a limb here, am I? This is Newsweek.

  by NewDirection on Tue Jul 18, 2006 at 03:30:17 PM PDT

•  I hope there's not an expectation...

  Expectation? What's that?

  Expectation implies hope. This situation is as close to hopeless as one can get.

  Is there truly a democracy where only chaos reigns? If the government is ignored and powerless, what have we accomplished?

  We have a Pig-talking-about-Chancellor-rubbing manboy in charge. We are so fucked.

  by Trim Your Bush on Tue Jul 18, 2006 at 03:35:00 PM PDT

•  Death and more death.

  How many Arabs/Muslims have been killed since Bush and his neocons took office? How many more will die by the time they leave?

  by Lords on Tue Jul 18, 2006 at 05:03:18 PM PDT