Administration officials repeated the mantra that progress continues toward building a unified Iraqi government and nation.

"Now is the time for resolve, not retreat," Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld wrote in a column for The Washington Post. "Turning our backs on postwar Iraq today would be the modern equivalent of handing postwar Germany back to the Nazis."

Yet there were acknowledgments from the top commander of U.S. forces in Iraq that the situation is fragile and that he did not predict the strength of the insurgency.

"I did not think it would be as robust as it has been," Gen. George W. Casey said on NBC's "Meet the Press." "And it's something that, obviously, with my time here on the ground, my thinking on that has gained much greater clarity and insight."

Bush did not mention the insurgent attacks, the car bombs or the mounting Iraqi deaths in a two-minute statement to reporters outside the White House after returning from a weekend at Camp David. Avoiding the word "war," he called the day "the third anniversary of the beginning of the liberation of Iraq."

The president only indirectly referred to the violence when he said he spent the morning reflecting on the sacrifices made by U.S. troops. Bush said he spoke by phone earlier in the day with the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, and had received a positive report.

The White House is trying to remind the disapproving public of Bush's vision for Iraq with a public relations blitz. The president plans to give a series of speeches on Iraq, beginning Monday in Cleveland.

More than three-fourths of the public thinks it's likely that Iraq is headed toward civil war, according to an AP-Ipsos poll taken in early March.

And two-thirds of Americans say the U.S. is losing ground in preventing civil war in Iraq, according to a Pew Research Center poll taken in the same period. That's up from 48 percent in January.

On Sunday, Vice President Dick Cheney did not express any regret for predicting in the days before the invasion that U.S. troops would be greeted as liberators or his assessment 10 months ago that the insurgency was in its "last throes." On the contrary, he said the optimistic statements "were basically accurate, reflect reality."

Like Bush, Cheney touted the political progress in Iraq, pointing out that the Iraqis have met the political deadlines set for them and predicting they will form a unified government "shortly."

In an interview on CBS' "Face the Nation," Cheney flatly rejected a statement made earlier Sunday by Iraq's former interim prime minister that the increasing attacks killing dozens each day across his country can only be described as a civil war. "If this is not civil war, then God knows what civil war is," Ayad Allawi told the British Broadcasting Corp.

Instead, Cheney described the violence as the actions of terrorists who have "reached a stage of desperation."

"What we've seen is a serious effort by them to foment a civil war," Cheney said. "But I don't think they've been successful."

Cheney blamed the negative perception on news coverage of the daily violence instead of the progress being made toward democracy.

"There is a constant sort of perception, if you will, that's created because what's newsworthy is the car bomb in Baghdad," the vice president said. "It's not all the work that went on that day in 15 other provinces."

White House critics bemoaned the fact that the third anniversary of fighting ever came to pass and accused the Bush administration of incompetence.

"By any measure, in my view, we're worse off in Iraq today than we were a year ago," Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., said on CNN's "Late Edition." He cited increased deaths and violence, incomplete government services and a long path to building a consensus government.

Rumsfeld urged Americans to continue supporting the fight and said he believes history will show that the terrorists were defeated. Meanwhile, his detractors issued another round of criticism and calls for his resignation.

In a New York Times column, retired Gen. Paul D. Eaton, who was in charge of training the Iraqi military from 2003-2004, called the defense secretary "incompetent strategically, operationally and tactically, and is far more responsible for what has happened to our important mission in Iraq. Mr. Rumsfeld must step down."

Nearly three years ago Bush announced the end to major combat in Iraq.

Last week, U.S. forces launched Operation Swarmer, described by the Pentagon as the biggest air assault since April 2003. However, Casey said Sunday that he wouldn't categorize Swarmer as a major combat operation, noting that other operations had used far more troops.

"It was an operation to go out into an almost uninhabited area," Casey said. "I think, frankly, it got a little bit more hype than it really deserved because of the use of the helicopters to get the Iraqi and the coalition forces there."

Appearing on TV news network NBC's "Meet the Press," Gen. George W. Casey said "a couple of more years" will be needed for the U.S. military presence in that country with "a gradually reducing coalition presence" as Iraqi security forces get more capable of dealing with the insurgency.

The general acknowledged that at the beginning of the war, the U.S. military may have had underestimated the insurgency.

He also admitted that the current situation in Iraq is fragile and will likely remain so until a new government of national unity is formed.

Casey said civil war remains a possibility because of increased sectarian tensions and violence, but he denied it will happen soon.

Echoing the Bush administration's defense of its war policy, he claimed "good progress" is being made both politically and militarily in Iraq.

Also appearing on "Meet the Press", leading congressional war critic John Murtha, a member of the House from Pennsylvania, repeated his call for redeploying U.S. troops over a six-month period to take them out of what he called a civil war.

Confronting Casey, the congressman said he did not see any progress in Iraq in terms of the slow training of security forces and the low levels of employment, fresh water, electricity and oil production.

In the wake of the James Frey debacle-and its tractor-powered disinterment of similar thinly-veiled literary hoaxes surrounding the the louche and love-starved - it's rather conspicuous (or perhaps not) that Jimmy Massey's name has failed to resurface in the broadsheets.

If you haven't heard of him, Massey, a former Marine staff sergeant who spent 12 years in the Corps before being medically discharged with post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and becoming a key figure in the peace movement with Veterans For Peace, rose to infamy last November after St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter Ron Harris (followed lockstep by hawkish blogger Michelle Malkin) discredited claims made by Massey in his book Kill, Kill, Kill that he'd been party to (and a participant in) war crimes during his tour in Iraq with a Combined Anti-Armor Team (CAT) platoon.

Although Harris and Co. vehemently disputed Massey's claims of killing innocent civilians on the road to Baghdad, Harris has admitted that he doesn't read French (the language in which Massey's book was published) nor was he ever directly embedded with Massey's unit. Malkin, for her part, failed to return various emails, which is telling, considering the fact that the claims made in Kill, Kill, Kill, which is also being published in Spain, were corroborated by three other Marines in Massey's platoon in interviews with the same French-American investigative journalist who ghost wrote the book with Massey.

To find out what really happened SMITH deconstructed the fog of the Iraq war with the Marines' most outspoken anti-war, war criminal.

SMITH: What made you want to write Kill, Kill, Kill?

MASSEY: When I was first diagnosed with PTSD, the psychologist suggested I write a memoir as part of the therapy. I started writing, basically just jotting down notes, and then when I got discharged from the Marine Corps, Natasha Saulnier, my ghostwriter, contacted me through Veterans For Peace. She did a couple interviews with me and asked if I wanted to write a book with her about my experiences, and it all kind of fell into place.

SMITH: How do you feel when people in the press like Ron Harris want to attack you for what you've said or what you've written?

MASSEY: Ron Harris is just covering his own behind. He knows he is just as liable for war crimes as any military member serving in Iraq.

SMITH: How so?

MASSEY: Because of his failure to do any investigative journalism into the actual incidents of the killing of civilians.

SMITH: Was he with you when this was happening?

MASSEY: No, he was never with my company. He was with Lima Company. The only time that I saw Ron Harris was after a particular incident happened at a checkpoint when he came in to do his little interview and leave back to Lima Company. It took an international incident for him to report any of the civilian casualties. It took the killing of reporters for him to finally talk about that.

SMITH: But what's the actual dispute?

MASSEY: Well, that's the thing. Ron Harris even stated that he didn't set out to dispute, he just didn't see the harshness I portray in the book. And I don't think Ron Harris has read the book either.

SMITH: So the contention is essentially whether the events you describe in the book should be labeled as normal combat procedures or war crimes.

MASSEY: I leave it up to the readers in the book. Are these war crimes or are these just fog of war? My definition of fog of war is that you're on the battlefield and out of the corner of your eye you see somebody run and you fire off a shot and you go find out it's a civilian. That's fog of war. Where I have a heartburn with it is that we actually escalated the violence by heightening the intelligence reports. We demonized the Iraqi people and we were given carte blanche to shoot first and ask questions later. I think that the truth hurts. I think when a lot of Marines read this book it's going to bring to their point of view the violations of the Geneva Conventions. Can you win a war with continued violations of the Geneva Conventions and International Law?

SMITH: So did you feel you were violating the law at the time?

MASSEY: Oh definitely, and I raised the BS flag very early on.

SMITH: And what did your fellow Marines say?

MASSEY: I was kind of treated like an outcast or rogue because they didn't like my opinions about certain situations. I became very agitated because I went up to Captain Smith [of Lima Company]. This was shortly after the red Kia incident. I told him we need to get combat engineers in here to fortify when we have these kinds of checkpoints. And his response was, "No-there's not going to be any combat engineers to come in."

SMITH: So what would you say to people who'd claim your story is a fake war story?

MASSEY: The thing is I was there. There were other members of the platoon that were there. I haven't seen one reporter that has interviewed guys who were in the book. Mainly these are just random Marines in other companies who have been interviewed. I think what is going to have to happen is that these Marines I talk about in the book are going to have to come forward or be interviewed and ask them about each particular event. Natasha Saulnier actually conducted the interviews with the Marines in the book, and they openly admit to killing civilians.

SMITH: Is this at the level of a Mai Lai incident?

MASSEY: I don't think it's to that level yet. I do think we have the propensity to head in that direction because of the military thought process and [because] we demonize the Iraqi people and treat every Iraqi as a potential terrorist. I'm very curious about Fallujah and the actual battle plans of what took place in Fallujah. I'd love to hear the civilian accounts of what happened, especially because I've been hearing that they used white phosphorous.

SMITH: Are you trying to get the book published in America?

MASSEY: If an American publishing company comes along and wants to publish it, sure. We've had a few look into it, and a few more are still looking into it, but it will published in Spain in March. We've also had a good response from the French-speaking provinces of Canada.

SMITH: What about those who'd say you were trying to make money off these events?

MASSEY: Come on, brother. You know how much I've made off this book? I made about $8,000. The reason I wrote the book was initially for therapy. I have started a PTSD foundation through Iraq Veterans Against The War called the Vets for Vets program. What I've been using are the proceeds that are going to that so that we can continue helping returning vets diagnosed with PTSD because the VA system is taking almost two years to get into the system, to get a diagnosis, to get a rating before they even start seeing a disability paycheck. These guys are living on the streets, homeless, and we still got people slapping yellow stickers on the back of their cars saying, "Support The Troops." They don't have a clue.

SMITH: What was the hardest thing for you to deal with over there? Not just the stuff you saw, but the day to day?

MASSEY: The desperation in the Iraqi people. I don't think that the Marines in my platoon had realized the devastation this country had been under. Thirteen years of sanctions, lack of medical supplies, humanitarian rations, and I knew the Iraqi people's plight because I read the history of Iraq, and I knew the US involvement with Iraq, and I was a firsthand witness. I saw American tanks in Iraqi compounds; I saw ammunition with American flags spray-painted on the ammo box. All evidence. But it was just the desperation in their eyes. They were looking at us to be liberators and provide that humanitarian support and just act humanely toward the Iraqi people and we didn't do it. We established places like Abu Ghraib; we established free-fire check zones at Marine Corps checkpoints, just crazy, crazy military blunders.

SMITH: What made you want to join the Marine Corps?

MASSEY: I came from a long line of military going all the way back to the civil war. All my kin, my family is from South Carolina, so I can trace all my roots back to here. I've had relatives that fought for the Confederacy, for the Union. My grandfather [Zachariah Roberts] was with Patton's division during World War II, and I was growing up hearing stories of what he did while he was over there. So I always had a deep sense of pride in my country.

SMITH: Did you enlist?

MASSEY: I was going to UTI [Universal Technical Institute] I was studying to become an automotive engineer, but my goal was to design new cars. But I ran out of money and so I worked in the oil fields for Cardinal Well Service in the Gulf Coast. I was a tool hand. I took a job in New Orleans doing the same thing. But being young I fell in love with Bourbon Street, and I was eventually fired, lost my apartment and became homeless. I had too much pride to go back to my mom and tell her, so I talked to a recruiter when I was in New Orleans. I called my mom [and told her] what I planned on doing. She begged me to come home, so I came home. I told her I wanted to go into the Marines, and this is what I need to do to be successful.

SMITH: Do you regret anything about your service?

MASSEY: Absolutely not. The only thing I regret … is that I did not go into the Naval Investigative Service and tell them what I saw.

SMITH: Why didn't you do that?

MASSEY: The Marine Corps told me they were doing the investigation and they were looking into what I was saying, so I was like well, "If they said they were looking into it, they were looking into it." And I didn't think I was getting discharged anytime soon.

SMITH: How do you think the support system is set up for soldiers and Marines who get "shell-shocked" over there?

MASSEY: We've got to look at the whole medical system of the military and see what their overall goal is. Lieutenant Col. Dave Grossman wrote a book called On Killing, and he talks about the psychological effects going all the way back to World War I up to the recent Gulf Invasion. He says the overall goal of the system is to get a member of the armed forces back on the battlefield. That's why they are setting up these little rehabilitation centers in Iraq. So they let them play video games, and I've seen pictures of these little camps they have, and they play video games and they have this down time. They give them psychotropic medications, antidepressants, things to help them sleep. Then they get them back to a certain level, they ship them back to their unit. But they're not getting to the real cause because the real cause-the PTSD-is a trauma that they've received while they are in country. And if you continue to keep them there that trauma continues to build and build.

SMITH: How did you feel when you came back? I've talked to other vets who say when they hear a car door slam or hear a firecracker go off they are very, very on edge.

MASSEY: I tell you what; the worst thing for me is driving. If I see a bag of garbage on the side of the road, or even if I see somebody walking, I'll just instantaneously flashback and think about IEDs. My wife doesn't let me drive anymore.

SMITH: You've been working with Cindy Sheehan. What is that like?

MASSEY: Working with Cindy is wonderful.

SMITH: What's it like on the ground in Crawford, Texas?

MASSEY: It was amazing. My life to me is certain periods where I heal and that's what I remember. PTSD, battling with it is everyday, but when I was in Crawford I didn't have to battle with it, it was like I felt a sense of camaraderie, communion, we were achieving the same goals.

SMITH: Have you met any opposition at these events?

MASSEY: Yeah, I've been on speaking engagements-one in particular was in upstate New York-where I had people actually out front protesting me being there.

SMITH: Did things get messy?

MASSEY: No, but that's the great thing: this is what the soldiers over there are fighting for is freedom of speech. I welcome those people if they want to come in and listen to what I have to say, or ask questions. I don't claim to be perfect or know everything so I welcome a healthy debate on topics. But the Marine Corps was good to me the 12 years I was in. It's not the Marine Corps' fault for being used in a negative direction; I don't harbor any ill feelings toward the Marine Corps. I learned valuable, intangible traits when I was in there-self-confidence, self-discipline. But in the back of my mind is that the reason they taught me these intangible traits was to turn me into a killer. And they succeeded.

SMITH: What was the fondest memory you had in Iraq?

MASSEY: I had a big saying while I was over there, I would come across the radio and say, "My Spiderman senses are kicking in." And that was kind of like a key to the rest of the boys to be on a heightened sense of alert. And this wonderful artist, Lance Corporal Martins, came up to me and drew this Spiderman with a Marine uniform on that had a caption that said, "My Spiderman senses are tingling." Just little stuff like that.

SMITH: And what is the day-to-day routine for you now?

MASSEY: I do a lot of work for IVAW [Iraq Veterans Against the War] so I'm heavily engaged in that and lining up different speaking engagements with various organizations throughout the U.S. and the rest of the world. I recently went to Kuala Lumpur. The prime minister of Malaysia was hosting a peace conference, and wanted a representative from IVAW and I was the chosen one. I also went to Ireland to help with the plan of getting the U.S. warplanes out of Ireland's Shannon Airport. I was on The Late Late Show [in Ireland] talking about the depleted uranium being flown through Ireland. I'm Scotch-Irish, so Ireland is my home country.

SMITH: What's the one thing we don't know about this war as the American public?

MASSEY: [Laughs] I feel … how can I put that … how do you tell a 25-year-old Iraqi that just witnessed his brother being killed at a Marine Corps checkpoint … how do you tell this young man not to become an insurgent?

SMITH: I don't know.

MASSEY: That's a question I'd like answered because I feel that's something we did. We escalated the violence by our stupidity, our lack of Middle Eastern cultural customs.

SMITH: What's a concrete example of that?

MASSEY: For one, [at checkpoints] we were sticking our fists up in the air, which is pretty much the military sign for stop. And then we would fire a warning shot as the car approached. I had this Iraqi-American woman, she came up to me, after I got done with a presentation [in America], and she said, "Wait a minute, explain to me what you were doing?" So I explained to her that we were sticking our hand in the air and firing a warning shot. She said, "Okay, don't you think that by sticking your fist in the air in a Middle Eastern country that that could possibly mean solidarity?" And I said, "Okay, I'll play devil's advocate with you, but what about the gunshot?" She said, "What do you always see Saddam Hussein doing on the television." And I was like, "Oh my god!" I travel to Iraq, go through that, to come back to the US to have this elderly Iraqi woman tell me that we were culturally fucked up.

SMITH: Were there any other things that bothered you after you returned home from Iraq?

MASSEY: I've got to bust on Harry Connick, Jr. This guy is from New Orleans. I've seen Harry Connick, Jr. play at the old Preservation Hall. This guy gets on CNN has the prime opportunity to say, "You know what? The government messed up. We were not getting the support we need to rebuild." And he blew it. When they asked him the hardball questions about how he felt, he blew it. He just kind of tiptoed and danced around it. I guess he's worried about his cell service. If that was me I would say, "Hey, come with me, walk with me down the street. I'll show you what New Orleans is like." And the celebrities are not doing it. Where are they at? What happened to the Johnny Rottens? What happened to the Dead Kennedys? That's the stuff I grew up to, the Dead Kennedys and Black Flag and The Cult. I grew up with those kind of bands, and it's just not there anymore.

SMITH: What did you think about the book and recent movie Jarhead?

MASSEY: I've got to give [author Anthony] Swofford props. I think he set out to tell a very heart-wrenching story of his indoctrination into war. I think that Swofford was censored. I could tell when I read the book that he wants to say something more here, and he wants to say something more here. You understand that Marine mentality. You can understand he was censored. Once I wrote my book and presented it to publishing companies, [and] they wanted to add things and take things out, I started to understand what he was up against. But I think Swofford did the very best of telling a gut-wrenching story, and ultimately I think his story has an anti-war statement.

SMITH: What's the ultimate goal here?

MASSEY: The ultimate goal is to end the occupation of Iraq and bring the troops home and once they're home provide support for them. That's the ultimate goal. I don't have any political ambitions-no crazy stuff like that.

Michael Slenske writes the "Back Home" column for Smith

Once we observe the sharp black outline of America's newest battlefield, the illusions of the "war on terror" are quickly dispelled. This is the geographic reality of the present conflict. The war on terror is merely public relations fluff.

A careful look at the region illustrates the crucial importance of integrating Iran into the overall plan. American industry must dominate this area if it hopes to maintain its edge on competitors in China and Europe. Iran and Syria are the unfortunate obstacles to that plan. Most of the other countries are either clients of the United States or are willing to comply without major resistance. Sudan may be the exception to this rule, but a strategy is already materializing (pushed by Ambassador John Bolton) at the UN to send in "Peacekeepers" who will carry out Washington's orders. This will place Sudan's oil and natural gas reserves under western control and divide the resources among the former colonial powers. Those who believe that "humanitarian intervention" in Sudan will reduce the suffering of the people in Darfur are sadly mistaken. We only need to look at the "liberation" of Iraq or the "Marshall Plan" in Afghanistan to realize that no attempt will be made to establish security in the hinterland. "Humanitarian intervention" is a tragic ruse invoked to disguise aggression and exploitation. We should not expect genuine aid from the international community or the many "lofty-sounding" institutions (World Bank, International Monetary Fund) that advance the exclusive interests of private industry.

The Bush master-plan cannot fully succeed without affecting regime change in Tehran and integrating Iran into the schema for regional domination. Iran has nearly 10% of the world's remaining oil as well as natural gas reserves that are second only to Russia's. Iran occupies an area that is critical to future pipeline routes that will link East to West; feeding the new giants of energy consumption in China and India. The Bush administration has no intention of allowing that wealth and power to fall into the hands of the Mullahs.

The present standoff over Iran's imaginary nuclear weapons-programs is merely a device for Washington to demonize Iran before taking military action. As IAEA Chief Mohammad ElBaradei has said repeatedly, there is "no evidence of a nuclear weapons program or the diversion of nuclear weapons material". Nevertheless, the administration has skillfully manipulated public opinion by providing a steady stream of misleading accusations which has weakened resistance for another war. The UN has played a vital role in this charade by fostering the belief that there is great uncertainty about Iran's nuclear activities, when in fact there is not.

The astonishing success of commercial media in co-opting public opinion for Washington's wars of aggression has exceeded all expectations. On any day, it is possible to find between 500 to 2,500 articles written on the topic of Iran (from different sources Reuters, AP, NY Times, Washington Post, ABC etc) written from the very same perspective, invoking the same talking points, language, buzz-words and quotes, and creating the same impression that Iran is in "noncompliance" with its treaty obligations. Without question, the corporate propaganda system is the most impressive weapon in the Pentagon's arsenal. It's clear that the administration would be incapable of pursuing its current war-strategy without the combined efforts of the corporate media.

An attack on Iran involves great risk and there is the real prospect that escalation might lead to nuclear war. As the increasingly inflammatory rhetoric indicates, however, the plan is going forward and will not be derailed by the reluctance of Congress, the thousands of protestors on the streets, or the ineffective braying at United Nations.

Those who dismiss the likelihood of an attack on Iran as "madness", fail to appreciate the true nature of fanaticism. The Bush administration is less guided by reason than it is by moral rectitude; neither plays any role in their decision-making process.

The bombing of Iran could take place some time as early as in the next two weeks or, as Condoleezza Rice likes to say, "At a time of our choosing."

The protesters, organized by the People for Peace and Justice of Utah, marched from Pioneer Park to a rally on the steps of the City-County Building, where they listened to songs, speeches and chants condemning the war.

It was a scene repeated across the United States and the world Saturday as thousands of demonstrators took to the streets to mark today's third anniversary of the invasion of Iraq.

The protests, like those held to mark each of the two previous anniversaries of the March 2003 invasion, were vigorous and peaceful but far smaller than the large-scale marches that preceded the war, despite polls showing lower public support for the war than in years past and anemic approval ratings for President Bush, himself a focus of many of the protesters.

In Times Square, about 1,000 anti-war protesters rallied outside a military recruiting station, demanding that troops be withdrawn from Iraq.

Police in London said 15,000 people joined a march from Parliament and Big Ben to a rally in Trafalgar Square. The anniversary last year attracted 45,000 protesters in the city.

In Turkey, where opposition to the war cuts across all political stripes, about 3,000 protesters gathered in Istanbul, police said. "Murderer USA," read a sign in Taksim Square.

One of the biggest protests was in San Francisco, for decades a hub of anti-war sentiment. Police there estimated the crowd gathered outside City Hall at about 6,000 people. Many chanted slogans opposing Bush, and most appeared to hail from a distinctly grayer demographic than that of other protest events.

"There are not enough young people here," said Paul Perchonock, 61, a physician. "They don't see themselves as having a stake."

In his weekly radio broadcast, Bush defended the administration's record in Iraq, saying the decision to depose the regime of Saddam Hussein was "a difficult decision - and it was the right decision." He pledged to "finish the mission" despite calls for withdrawal.

In Washington, a relatively small crowd of about 300 gathered at the Naval Observatory, where Vice President Dick Cheney lives, and marched to Dupont Circle. Debbie Boch, 52, a restaurant manager from Denver, said she and two friends bought plane tickets to Washington two months ago, before the demonstration had been planned. It was the fifth protest march she had attended since the war began, she said, and among the smallest.

"It's very disappointing, especially in Washington, D.C.," she said. "You think this is the place where people come to make things happen. I'm just not sure why there aren't more people here today."

At the Salt Lake City march and rally, protesters read and commented on each other's signs, like the large image of Bush carried by Gail Davis. Under the slogan "War dead on your head," the president's face was created out of a mosaic of photographs of dead U.S. soldiers.

Davis said she joins a peace vigil every Thursday night at the Bennett Federal Building at 125 S. State St. "We're not getting too many death threats anymore," said Davis, who works at as a manager at a law office. "Nobody's tried to run over us or anything for a while."

Darian Richards, 9, marched from Pioneer Park with a sign that read: "Bring my dad home." Richard Evans' said "Welcome to 1984," a reference to George Orwell's book. Others drew upon the messages of an earlier generation of activists: "I have a dream," one sign announced over a picture of jail bars printed over the faces of Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney.

Jacob Floyd, a 22-year-old Brigham Young University student, said he was thinking of the future when he decided to attend.

"I came today because I want to tell my kids I did everything I could to stand up for what's wrong in our country right now," he said.

Floyd announced his politics on his chest, thanks to a homemade white T-shirt with the headline "They lied" over the faces of administration officials, including Bush and Cheney, and the words "They died" over a list of names of dead U.S. soldiers.

Throughout the morning, a group of eight women dressed in pink-and-black outfits occasionally broke out in chants. "Resist, resist, raise up your fist," shouted Raphael Cordray of Salt Lake, one of the "Pom Poms Not Bomb Bombs" cheerleaders. "Show 'em that you're pissed. Resist, resist, fight the capitalists."

Cordray said the group of friends, who range in age from 22 to 55, were inspired by radical cheerleading groups in other states, and used chants as a way to express their political views in a lighthearted way. "Some of the cheers we tone down for Salt Lake City," she said.

The press, flown in from Baghdad to this agricultural gridiron northeast of Samarra, huddled around the Iraqi officials and U.S. Army commanders who explained that the "largest air assault since 2003" in Iraq using over 50 helicopters to put 1500 Iraqi and U.S. troops on the ground had netted 48 suspected insurgents, 17 of which had already been cleared and released. The area, explained the officials, has long been suspected of being used as a base for insurgents operating in and around Samarra, the city north of Baghdad where the bombing of a sacred shrine recently sparked a wave of sectarian violence.

But contrary to what many many television networks erroneously reported, the operation was by no means the largest use of airpower since the start of the war. ("Air Assault" is a military term that refers specifically to transporting troops into an area.) In fact, there were no airstrikes and no leading insurgents were nabbed in an operation that some skeptical military analysts described as little more than a photo op. What's more, there were no shots fired at all and the units had met no resistance, said the U.S. and Iraqi commanders.

The operation, which doubled the population of the flat farmland in one single airlift, was initiated by intelligence from Iraq security forces, says Lt Col Skip Johnson commander of the 187 Battallion, 3rd Combat Brigade of the 101st Airborne. "They have the lead," he said to reporters at the second stop of the tour. But by Friday afternoon, the major targets seemed to have slipped through their fingers. Iraqi Army General Abdul Jabar says that Samarra-based insurgent leader Hamad el Taki of Mohammad's Army was thought to be in the area, and Iraqi intelligence officers were still working to compare known voice recordings and photographs with the prisoners in custody.

With the Interior Ministry's Samarra commando battalion, the soldiers had found some 300 individual pieces of weaponry like mortars, rockets and plastic explosives in six different locations inside the sparsely populated farming community of over 50 square miles and about 1,500 residents. The raids also uncovered high-powered cordless telephones used as detonators in homemade bombs, medical supplies and insurgent training manuals.

Before loading up into the helicopters for a return trip to Baghdad, Iraqi and American soldiers and some reporters helped themselves to the woman's freshly baked bread, tearing bits off and chewing it as they wandered among the cows. For most of them, it was the only thing worthwhile they'd found all day.

The source alleged that "the health and transport ministers, which both are headed by minsiters from the Sadr faction, have been completely monopolised by followers of this movement" adding that "in Sadr City the police forces, for example the local police, take their orders from Moqtada al-Sadr and not from the interior ministry."

The Cultural Network of Iraq, an internet site which publishes news on the Shiite community, has said that "the peoples courts in Sadr City have condemned to death terrorists who carried out massacres in the city."

The former government of Iyad Allawi and the movement of al-Sadr,. who has headed two lengthly revolts against the US-led coalition forces, clashed over these courts, which have special police forces and prisons. When the authorities in Baghdad tried to close them down and disband the militias they failed.

The power of Sadr's militia and his huge constituency of loyal Shiite voters have made him a growing force in Iraq.

Gunmen wearing the old Mahdi Army uniform of black pants and black shirts - abandoned for civilian gear in recent days - are blamed for some of the worst retaliatory raids and killings in Baghdad following the bombing of a Shiite shrine in Samarra on 22 February.

"We have to make a really cold judgement," said Brzezinski. "Would the consequence of civil war be more devastating than the consequences of staying the course?"

Iraqi Shiites and Kurds might prevail in a civil war, Brzezinski said.

"The U.S. umbrella that is designed to prevent these wars is so porous it ends up feeding them," he said.

It would take a U.S. commitment of half a million troops to make a significant difference in fighting the Iraqi insurgency, Brzezinski said. But, "We are not in a position to do this," he said.

Brzezinski also called for a new U.S. nuclear dialogue with Iran. A precedent for one already existed in the Bush administration's multi-lateral talks with North Korea on nuclear proliferation, he said.

"Surely it cannot be our deliberate intention to fuse Iranian nationalism with Iranian fundamentalism?" he said.

Brzezinski said that however long the U.S. military occupation of Iraq lasted, it was doomed to failure.

"In a war of attrition," he said, "a foreign occupier is always at a disadvantage. This is a failed occupation."

Brzezinski said Iraq had not yet collapsed into a full-scale civil war. Far from preventing such a war from breaking out, he said, the continued U.S. military occupation made one far more likely.

"This is not yet a civil war, in the sense that it is not yet a comprehensive, nation-wide collision between Shiites and Sunnis but we are unintentionally feeding it," he said.

Brzezinski suggested that the United States "ask Iraqi leaders to ask us to leave" and suggested that those Iraqi politicians who have expressed a desire for American forces to continue the occupation are exercising poor leadership.

"We are acting as though the Iraqis are our colonial wards," he said. "We are teaching them about democracy by arresting them, bombing them, by humiliating them and also helping them. It is an ambivalent course in democracy."

Brzezinski also said the president had failed to provide any serious national leadership to back up his commitment to the Iraq war and had failed to call the American people to the spirit of duty and sacrifice needed to win any real war.

"What bothers me is the packaging," Brzezinski said. He said that if the United States were truly engaged in war, then there would need to for a national mobilization involving a tax on the rich, an overall war tax and a draft. "These actions," he said, "are the basic consequences of serious engagement."

Brzezinski also hit out at President George W. Bush's newly released National Security Strategy. He called it "an erroneous version of reality."

Brzezinski urged Bush to widen his circle of advisors. "Words have consequences," he said. "The deliberate misuse of words can be dangerous and a fundamentally altered version of reality can lead to a fear-driven nation."

Other speakers at the CAP meeting called the bombing of a Shiite mosque in Samara "a turning point for Iraq" and recommended a shift in U.S. priorities from institution-building to a peace process similar to the Dayton accords which sought a resolution for the Bosnia conflict in the nineteen-nineties.

Jonathan Morrow, a lawyer who worked to rebuild legal institutions in the country after the U.S. invasion said "Iraq was dealt with as a post-conflict crisis, which is quite ironic actually because the conflict was just beginning."

"The Iraqi Constitution -- for all its flaws -- is an authentic version of what Iraqis want," he said. "Iraq looks like a lot less of a disaster if you accept that there will be a loosely central government and if you focus on peace-building rather than nation-building or institution-building."

"The model is not difficult," Morrow said, "to bring all the players to the table, to build a consensus version of what peace should look like in Iraq. One of the key questions is to find someone who authentically speaks for the Sunni Arabs."

Jonathan Finer, Baghdad Correspondent for the Washington Post, said the influence of Iran in Iraq was hard to overstate, particularly in the case of Iranian Shiite clerics whose voice he called "a significant force" in Iraqi politics.

Morrow said, "We cannot expect to succeed in Iraq without involving the regional players - and that means involving Iran. You cannot pursue conflicting policies. But there do have to be priorities and that doesn't necessarily mean sacrificing security interests."

© Copyright 2006 United Press International, Inc. All Rights Reserved

He continued his address, brushing aside attempts by the tribunal's chief judge, Raouf Abdel-Rahman to silence him:

"The bloodshed that they (the US occupation authorities) have caused to the Iraqi people only made them more intent and strong to evict the foreigners from their land and liberate their country ... Let the people resist the invaders and their supporters rather than kill each other ... Oh Iraqis, men and women... those who blew up the shrine are shameful criminals."

By this time, Abdel-Rahman was shouting hysterically. "No more political speeches. We are a criminal court, a judicial court, we don't have anything to do with political issues or anything like this. Testify," he demanded.

Hussein replied, "Political issues are what brought you and me here," and continued with his prepared remarks, which faded in and out as the agitated judge repeatedly cut off his microphone. He denounced the US government as "criminals who came under the pretext of weapons of mass destruction and the pretext of democracy."

Again the judge cut him off, demanding: "You are a defendant in a major criminal case, concerning the killing of innocents. You have to respond to this charge."

In a sharp rejoinder, Hussein asked, "What about those who are dying in Baghdad? Are they not innocents? Are they not Iraqis? ... Just yesterday, 80 bodies of Iraqis were discovered in Baghdad. Aren't they innocent?"

It was at this point that the judge ordered sound and video cut off entirely, blackening the screens of televisions tuned to the trial all over Iraq. "The court has decided to turn this into a secret and closed session," he announced, ordering reporters to leave the chamber inside Baghdad's heavily fortified, US-controlled "Green Zone."

The trial had to be closed because the points made by Hussein are unassailable. The proceedings unquestionably represent a political show trial, staged by Washington in an effort to legitimize its invasion and occupation of Iraq. The court is the creation of an illegal act of aggression and its very existence constitutes a serious violation of international law, which explicitly bars occupying powers from imposing their own judicial bodies in the territories they occupy.

The court is itself merely a façade for US military control over Iraq and the continuing abrogation of the sovereignty of its people. Behind the hand-picked judges, there is a battalion of US officials and lawyers who have orchestrated the entire affair. Even the television feed that the judge ordered shut down was set up by the US cable broadcasting company, Court TV, under a contract worked out by Washington.

The more fundamental question posed by Hussein's intervention, of course is: what gives Washington the right to judge anyone for the crime of killing innocent Iraqis?

There is no doubt that Saddam Hussein, whose Baathist regime defended the interests of the Iraqi ruling elite, carried out grave crimes against the Iraqi people. But the fact remains that at the time they were committed, his actions enjoyed the backing of Washington itself, which saw Iraq as a bulwark against Iran and far preferred Hussein over a revolutionary uprising of the oppressed Iraqi masses.

Moreover, when it comes to the deaths of innocent Iraqis, those who set the policies of the US government have far eclipsed Saddam Hussein. By conservative estimates, over 100,000 Iraqis have died since the US invasion three years ago-more probable assessments put the figure at closer to a half a million.

Since the first US war against Iraq 15 years ago, the death toll from US military action and the effects of punishing economic sanctions imposed at Washington's demand numbers well into the millions. The lives of millions more have been turned into a living hell by the US military occupation.

Under these conditions, for those who carried out these policies to try the former Iraqi president on charges that he orchestrated the execution of 148 people in the wake of an assassination attempt is nothing short of obscene.

Moreover, the immediate context of the ongoing trial, as Hussein referred to, is that of an unfolding bloodbath in the streets of Baghdad and in cities and towns throughout the country. Every day sees scores if not hundreds more killed. Thousands of bodies have filled the Baghdad morgue, many of them with their hands bound and showing signs of torture and summary execution, carried out by Iraqi police-military death squads, trained and financed by the US. Other lives are claimed daily by suicide bombings and mounting sectarian violence that has brought the country to the brink of civil war. The pretense that Iraq today is a country of laws is patently absurd.

Having destroyed what remained of Iraq's shattered social infrastructure in a criminal scheme to assert its own domination over the country and its strategic oil reserves, Washington bears full responsibility for all of this carnage.

Meanwhile, the US military's own war against the Iraqi people continues unabated, as witnessed Thursday in what the Pentagon boasted was the largest air assault since the invasion three years ago. Some 1,500 airborne troops were helicoptered into several villages outside the city of Samarra. While the operation has been carried out under intense secrecy, witnesses in the city said that large explosions could be heard in the distance. Both Washington and the Iraqi regime have compared the operation to the bloody US siege of Fallujah last year.

An indication of the grim human toll exacted by such operations came Wednesday, when US forces called in tank fire and air strikes against a house near the town of Ishaqi, about 55 miles north of Baghdad. A Pentagon spokesman said that the house was believed to be harboring a "foreign fighter facilitator." According to local police, 13 people were killed in the attack, including five children between the ages of six months and 11 years, and four women.

"The killed family was not part of the resistance; they were women and children," Ahmed Khalaf, the brother of one of the victims told the Associated Press. "The Americans have promised us a better life, but we get only death."

Meanwhile, a report in the Knight-Ridder newspapers in the US, citing Pentagon data, concluded that "daily bombing runs and jet-missile launches have increased by more than 50 percent in the past five months, compared with the same period last year"-a conclusion that was confirmed by US Air Force officials. It added that, while most of the air strikes last year were carried out in the siege of Fallujah, this year has seen such bombardments in 18 Iraqi cities.

Bombs and missiles rained down on Iraqi towns and cities on at least 76 days between October 2005 and last month, according to the report. How many innocent victims have been claimed by this brutal and intense air war against a largely defenseless civilian population is unknown.

Saddam Hussein's intervention in the "Green Zone" courtroom provoked anger and discomfort within the US media, reflecting the reaction within the American ruling establishment itself. In its news account, the New York Times described the speech as an "incendiary political diatribe."

The displeasure voiced by the Times editorial Thursday was even more explicit: "The trial of Saddam Hussein should be a showcase for a better Iraq. It should clearly demonstrate that decades of secret trials and summary verdicts are giving way to a new era of transparency and the rule of law. It should be showing these things, but thus far it has fallen disappointingly short."

It described the judge's decision to shut down television broadcast, throw reporters out and go into secret session as a "self-inflicted black eye."

Instead, the newspaper declared, "Judge Abdel-Rahman should simply have gaveled him down when he refused to address the charges, and left the cameras rolling." Saddam Hussein, the editorial indicated, should be "ordered to sit down and keep his mouth shut."

Such is the fine distinction between a democratic "showcase" and an ugly imperialist show trial.

In the end, however, there is good reason to want Hussein-or anyone else who invokes the criminality of those judging him-shut up. The obvious issue raised by such charges, and implicitly by the US-orchestrated trial itself, is when will those in Washington, who have carried out a war of aggression that has cost countless thousands of Iraqi lives, be held criminally accountable?

TRANSCRIPT

AMY GOODMAN: Today, we're joined by both authors of Cobra II, Michael Gordon of The New York Times and Bernard Trainor, retired Marine general and former military correspondent for the Times. They join us in the studio in Washington, D.C. We welcome you both to Democracy Now!

GEN. BERNARD TRAINOR: Good morning.

MICHAEL GORDON: Good morning.

AMY GOODMAN: It's good to have you both with us. If you, General Bernard Trainor, can lay out what you think were the five problems with the invasion, as you lay them out in the book.

GEN. BERNARD TRAINOR: Well, these -- I think it can be generally stated that there were erroneous assumptions made upon which the planning floundered. The ground attack went to Baghdad in record time. However, along the way they ran into the sort of resistance that they had not expected. But if you're looking for the weak link in the process, it wasn't the operation itself, the invasion itself. It was the plan for the end of the invasion. And I use the term "plan," because a lot of people say that there wasn't any plan after Saddam's regime fell.

But there was a plan. And the plan was for the United States military to get out of Iraq as quickly as possible, turn Iraq over to a U.S.-supported Iraqi government, on the assumption that the infrastructure, both the political and economic infrastructure, would be largely intact, and that the international community, the U.N. and others, would get involved in the post-Saddam period. That was a fatally flawed assumption, and as a result, a fatally flawed plan.

So, if you're looking for the problem that emerged with the insurgency, that would be kind of the fundamental principle. There were lots of other little mistakes that went through it, which turned out to be very large mistakes: disbanding the Iraqi army, not having sufficient American forces to follow on the invasion -- as a matter of fact, cutting back on the forces that were involved in the invasion -- and all of these things closed a window of opportunity of reasonable stability that existed immediately after the fall of Baghdad. But that window of opportunity only stayed open for a short period of time, and it slammed shut, and the insurgency emerged.

AMY GOODMAN: Michael Gordon, do you think the invasion itself was a mistake?

MICHAEL GORDON: Well, that's a policy judgment and a political judgment that's really beyond the scope of our book. Our book is not about whether we should or should not have gone to war. The book is about how we went to war. And one thing that our analysis and reporting shows, as General Trainor said, is in the summer of 2003 -- and I was embedded throughout this period in Baghdad then -- I think most of the U.S. military commanders there thought that there was a chance to put Iraq on a better course had we done some things differently, had we had more troops, had we had effective nation-building policies, had we not disbanded the army. And it was the combination of these errors that created an environment which allowed the insurgency to gain some traction.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Michael Gordon, your book is especially critical throughout of the role of Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld. You talk about a variety of ways in which he directly participated in the planning and even when troops would be deployed, micromanaged the military at a level unprecedented. Could you talk a little bit about that and why you were so critical of Secretary Rumsfeld?

MICHAEL GORDON: Well, you know, in our book, General Trainor and I, we didn't set out to do an investigation of Secretary Rumsfeld or General Franks. We just laid out the facts, and we had a lot of documents and a lot of interviews. And what the facts show is that Secretary Rumsfeld came to the Defense Department with an agenda. The agenda was to transform the American military. There's some good in that. We're not saying that's all bad by any means. But he wanted to create a force that could be basically lean and mean and carry out operations that were far smaller than, let's say, an invasion force that Colin Powell would put together. I think the force that he put together -- and he didn't actually order the generals to do it this way or that way, but he guided them, through suasion, as one of his aides put it, by asking the appropriate questions, by demanding certain briefings, by sending down papers that he wanted the generals to read.

But basically, the force that he essentially established for the invasion was adequate for the task of taking Baghdad and getting there, although there were a few hairy moments along the way, but utterly inadequate for what followed, you know, the so-called -- what the military called "Phase IV" or really the post-war operations. He was really a dominating presence. But, you know, General Franks, I'd say, was very much on the same wavelength, and the two, you know, basically collaborated to put together the plan. You know, one very interesting thing is that the joint chiefs of staff were largely marginalized in this process, and in certain respects, the National Security Advisor, Condoleezza Rice, and Secretary of State Powell were pretty much cut out of it, too.

AMY GOODMAN: General Trainor, you talk about the troika -- President Bush, Vice President Cheney and Rumsfeld -- making the decisions?

GEN. BERNARD TRAINOR: That's correct. That's a correct -- the three of them were joined at the hip, if I can use that expression. They all thought basically the same way, and their perceptions became reality. I think the President, I would describe it as the man who presided over the troika. I think Vice President Cheney was very influential in terms of the policy. And certainly, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld was a man in charge of the execution of the policy. Everybody else was what I would describe as in the outer circle. The National Security Advisor, Condoleezza Rice, the Secretary of State, Colin Powell, and even the neo-cons, which gained so much blame for things going wrong. But those people were -- they were in the outside of the private sanctum of the President, Vice President and Secretary of Defense. Those three thought alike and acted in unison.

JUAN GONZALEZ: But interestingly, in terms of Secretary Powell, while he wasn't as much in the loop, according to your book, it wasn't so much that he opposed going into Iraq. According to some of your, I guess, interviews with Richard Armitage, the secretary's thoughts were the invasion of Iraq should wait until President Bush's second term, after he had built more international support, and that he saw it as totally -- something totally acceptable perhaps in the second term.

GEN. BERNARD TRAINOR: Well, I think you have to step back and look at the situation as it existed. The international community, all the intelligence agencies were all convinced that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. And this administration saw that as a threat that required preemptive action, because -- not that Saddam Hussein was going to pop a nuclear weapon or chemical weapon here in the United States -- but he saw that after 9/11, the threat of amorphous terrorism, with terrorists getting chemical, biological weapons and ultimately nuclear weapons without any national fingerprint on it. And how do you deal with something like that?

So the policy was, we have legitimate right to defend the United States. We have the responsibility to defend the United States. And in this instance, we have to preempt the Iraqis from providing the wherewithal to terrorists. And so, that convinced a lot of people. It convinced the Congress. And it convinced the average man on the street that this was something that should be done. Obviously, there were certain people that did not agree. But the fact is, the Congress supported the whole thing.

The Secretary of State's position wasn't quite as crude as you describe it, as waiting for a second election. He wanted to give diplomacy a chance. It wasn't that he was opposed to going into Iraq. It was a matter of timing. And that's what he was insisting on. See if we can't build up a coalition, whereas the troika felt that they could pretty much act independently and a coalition would follow after the defeat of Saddam Hussein.

AMY GOODMAN: We're talking to General Bernard Trainor, who used to the write for the Times, now is an NBC military analyst. And we're talking to Michael Gordon, chief military correspondent for The New York Times. They have written a new book. It's called Cobra II: The Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq. We'll come back to them in a minute.

To purchase an audio or video copy of this entire program, click here for our new online ordering or call 1 (888) 999-3877.

As the third anniversary of the calamity draws close, the final argument used by what little remains of the brave army of pro-war punditry that set out with the prime minister in 2003 has gone belly up. Far from preventing a civil war, the Anglo-American occupation of Iraq is provoking one. It is doing so through its divide-and-rule strategy, which has entrenched and inflamed the Sunni-Shia divide beyond anything in Iraq's history, and through its refusal to afford Iraqis the unfettered exercise of national sovereignty, which is the only framework for overcoming such differences.

There is scarcely even a pretence that Iraq is permitted such sovereignty at present. Both Jack Straw and the US ambassador to Baghdad have recently been instructing the Iraqis as to what sort of government they must form - three months after the supposedly decisive national elections took place.

And all this to the accompaniment of unabated violence. Reliable estimates for violent civilian deaths under the occupation range well over 100,000. Faik Bakir, the director of the Baghdad morgue, has had to flee the country after revealing that more than 7,000 people had been killed, often after torture, by officers of the US-supervised interior ministry. The carnage continues: more families will be burying their dead this morning after yesterday's 50-warplane assault on Samarra by the US - the biggest yet and clearest possible demonstration of the occupation's brutality and failure.

It defies common sense to suppose that the only torture and degradation of civilians carried out by US and British troops has been that caught on camera at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere. No wonder Iraqi local authorities now refuse to deal with the British army in the south.

The pledge that all this suffering would at least assist a solution to the Palestinian question has proved painfully hollow, with the Israelis ram-raiding a Palestinian prison in Jericho - just like British troops in Basra. But still the war junkies seem to believe one more hit - this time against Iran - will lead to the breakthrough to the docile Middle East they desire. Straw's assertion that it is "inconceivable" has found no echo in Washington or Jerusalem. Almost every Iranian agrees that aggression will consolidate support for the regime in Tehran. It will certainly cost many more lives and inflame Muslims everywhere.

None of this was unavoidable. The anti-war movement around the world has been vindicated both in its estimation of the unjustified nature of the war and the consequences of an occupation of Iraq. And Britain has reaped the consequences. Most people understand that the terrorist threat "over here" is in large measure a consequence of what we are doing "over there". The denial of that connection has damaged civil liberties and community cohesion in Britain.

This was not a war the British people wanted. This weekend protests against the prolongation of the Iraq war and its threatened extension to Iran will take place across the globe, including in Iraq. To put it in language the prime minister understands: vox populi vox dei (the voice of the people is the voice of God). The time for accounting is now.

· Andrew Murray is the chair of the Stop the War Coalition, which is organising a demonstration in London tomorrow.

apdmurray@hotmail.com

www.stopwar.org.uk

Datelined Washington - an odd city in which to learn about Iraq, you might think - its opening paragraph reads: "Despite the recent arrest of one of his would-be suicide bombers in Jordan and some top aides in Iraq, insurgency mastermind Abu Musab Zarqawi has eluded capture, US authorities say, because his network has a much better intelligence-gathering operation than they do."

Now quite apart from the fact that many Iraqis - along, I have to admit, with myself - have grave doubts about whether Zarqawi exists, and that al-Qai'da's Zarqawi, if he does exist, does not merit the title of "insurgency mastermind", the words that caught my eye were "US authorities say". And as I read through the report, I note how the Los Angeles Times sources this extraordinary tale. I thought American reporters no longer trusted the US administration, not after the mythical weapons of mass destruction and the equally mythical connections between Saddam and the international crimes against humanity of 11 September 2001. Of course, I was wrong.

Here are the sources - on pages one and 10 for the yarn spun by reporters Josh Meyer and Mark Mazzetti: "US officials said", "said one US Justice Department counter-terrorism official", "Officials ... said", "those officials said", "the officials confirmed", "American officials complained", "the US officials stressed", "US authorities believe", "said one senior US intelligence official", "US officials said", "Jordanian officials ... said" - here, at least is some light relief - "several US officials said", "the US officials said", "American officials said", "officials say", "say US officials", "US officials said", "one US counter-terrorism official said".

I do truly treasure this story. It proves my point that the Los Angeles Times - along with the big east coast dailies - should all be called US OFFICIALS SAY. But it's not just this fawning on political power that makes me despair. Let's move to a more recent example of what I can only call institutionalised racism in American reporting of Iraq. I have to thank reader Andrew Gorman for this gem, a January Associated Press report about the killing of an Iraqi prisoner under interrogation by US Chief Warrant Officer Lewis Welshofer Jnr.

Mr Welshofer, it transpired in court, had stuffed the Iraqi General Abed Hamed Mowhoush head-first into a sleeping bag and sat on his chest, an action which - not surprisingly - caused the general to expire. The military jury ordered - reader, hold your breath - a reprimand for Mr Welshofer, the forfeiting of $6,000 of his salary and confinement to barracks for 60 days. But what caught my eye was the sympathetic detail. Welshofer's wife's Barbara, the AP told us, "testified that she was worried about providing for their three children if her husband was sentenced to prison. 'I love him more for fighting this,' she said, tears welling up in her eyes. 'He's always said that you need to do the right thing, and sometimes the right thing is the hardest thing to do'".

Yes, I guess torture is tough on the torturer. But try this from the same report: "Earlier in the day ... Mr Welshofer fought back tears. 'I deeply apologise if my actions tarnish the soldiers serving in Iraq,' he said."

Note how the American killer's remorse is directed not towards his helpless and dead victim but to the honour of his fellow soldiers, even though an earlier hearing had revealed that some of his colleagues watched Welshofer stuffing the general into the sleeping bag and did nothing to stop him. An earlier AP report stated that "officials" - here we go again - "believed Mowhoush had information that would 'break the back of the insurgency'." Wow. The general knew all about 40,000 Iraqi insurgents. So what a good idea to stuff him upside down inside a sleeping bag and sit on his chest.

But the real scandal about these reports is we're not told anything about the general's family. Didn't he have a wife? I imagine the tears were "welling up in her eyes" when she was told her husband had been done to death. Didn't the general have children? Or parents? Or any loved ones who "fought back tears" when told of this vile deed? Not in the AP report he didn't. General Mowhoush comes across as an object, a dehumanised creature who wouldn't let the Americans "break the back" of the insurgency after being stuffed headfirst into a sleeping bag.

Now let's praise the AP. On an equally bright summer's morning in Australia a few days ago I open the Sydney Morning Herald. It tells me, on page six, that the news agency, using the Freedom of Information Act, has forced US authorities to turn over 5,000 pages of transcripts of hearings at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp. One of them records the trial of since-released British prisoner Feroz Abbasi, in which Mr Abbasi vainly pleads with his judge, a US air force colonel, to reveal the evidence against him, something he says he has a right to hear under international law.

And here is what the American colonel replied: "Mr Abbasi, your conduct is unacceptable and this is your absolute final warning. I do not care about international law. I do not want to hear the words international law. We are not concerned about international law."

Alas, these words - which symbolise the very end of the American dream - are buried down the story. The colonel, clearly a disgrace to the uniform he wears, does not appear in the bland headline ("US papers tell Guantanamo inmates' stories") of the Sydney paper, more interested in telling us that the released documents identify by name the "farmers, shopkeepers or goatherds" held in Guantanamo.

I am now in Wellington, New Zealand, watching on CNN Saddam Hussein's attack on the Baghdad court trying him. And suddenly, the ghastly Saddam disappears from my screen. The hearing will now proceed in secret, turning this drumhead court into even more of a farce. It is a disgrace. And what does CNN respectfully tell us? That the judge has "suspended media coverage"!

If only, I say to myself, CNN - along with the American press - would do the same.

Americans have not even been asked to stump up the cash for the war effort – at least not yet – with the administration and Congress opting for higher borrowing rather than higher taxes.

As of Friday military casualties had mounted to 2,313 killed and 17,000 wounded. This is enough to make many Americans question the conflict, but the toll still falls far short of the 58,000 Americans who died in Vietnam.

But the simmering concerns over the conflict have been taking a heavy toll on support for George W. Bush, dragging the president's approval ratings close to the levels of support for President Richard Nixon in the wake of Watergate.

A poll for Newsweek magazine at the end of last week showed that just 29 per cent of Americans approve of the president's handling of the war, down from 69 per cent in the months after the conflict began in March 2003. Almost 60 per cent of Americans now feel less confident that the war will come to a successful conclusion, with fears mounting that the country will slide into civil war.

The administration has launched a new campaign to rebuild support for the war. In a television interview on Sunday, Dick Cheney, the vice-president, said there was "overwhelming evidence" that the US was making progress in Iraq. Set-piece speeches are planned this week by both the president and vice-president.

Yet despite the reassurances, recent pronouncements of the president have had an uncharacteristically dour tone. In a speech over the weekend, Mr Bush acknowledged that there had been "horrific images from Iraq" and that a "tense situation" prevailed in parts of the country. He urged Americans to brace for "more fighting and sacrifice." That is not what was being predicted three years ago.

In Louisiana, 200 war veterans, hurricane survivors and others gathered at the Chalmette National Cemetery to protest how the war had hurt the country's ability to help the Gulf Coast recover from last year's hurricanes.

"We attacked a country who never did anything to us," said Philadelphia resident Al Zappala, whose 30-year-old son was killed in Iraq in 2004. "He was sent to Iraq based on lies."

About 200 marched Sunday down New York's Fifth Avenue, with signs including: "Resist the War - Don't enlist." Nineteen were given summonses for disorderly conduct and released, police said. Saturday's rally drew more than 1,000 people.

Also Saturday, more than 7,000 people marched through downtown Chicago.

The protests drew crowds far short of the millions who protested the Iraq invasion in March 2003 and the anniversary in 2004.

President Bush marked the anniversary Sunday by touting the efforts to build democracy in Iraq. He avoided any mention of the continuing daily violence there and didn't utter the word "war."

"We are implementing a strategy that will lead to victory in Iraq," Bush said.

Outside the United States, protests included a 1,000-strong rally in Seoul, where demonstrators urged the South Korean government to bring their troops home.

In Malaysia's largest city, Kuala Lumpur, about 600 people protested peacefully, unlike a gathering last year when police used a water cannon to disperse demonstrators. In Tokyo, about 800 demonstrators took to the streets, after some 2,000 protested the day earlier.

In London, police said 15,000 people joined a march Saturday from Parliament and Big Ben to a rally in Trafalgar Square. The anniversary last year attracted 45,000 protesters in the city.

Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez, a strident Bush critic, offered some of his harshest criticisms of the U.S. president in months.

"The world is opposed to your war, Mr. Danger," Chavez said on his weekly television and radio program. He also called Bush a "coward," a "donkey" and a "drunkard."

Hundreds of anti-war protesters marched silently and carried symbolic caskets through the capital of Puerto Rico, led by the families of soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"We wanted to do something simple, something so simple and solemn as a funeral march through our towns," said Wanda Colon, a spokeswoman for the organizers.

In Reno, Nev., some 400 anti-war protesters were greeted by about two dozen counter-demonstrators. It was a reversal from three years ago when about 200 pro-military demonstrators crashed an anti-war protest, drowning out about 150 peace activists' hymns and speeches.

Activist Cindy Sheehan, who energized the anti-war movement last summer with her monthlong protest outside Bush's Texas ranch, joined the Gulf Coast marchers in Mississippi on Friday, but left early Sunday for events in Washington.

"The support for this war has dwindled dramatically," she said. "The rest of America is on board with ending this war."

---

Associated Press writers Michelle Roberts in Chalmette, La.; Paul Burkhardt in New York; Hrvoje Hranjski in Manila, Philippines; Martin Griffith in Reno, Nev.; and Sue Leeman in London contributed to this report.

© 2006 The Associated Press.

Allawi also warned that if fighting continues as it has, the country could fragment with aftershocks being felt in Europe and the United States.

"It will not only fall apart but sectarianism will spread throughout the region, and even Europe and the U.S. will not be spared the violence that results," he said.

The BBC report quoted analysts who said they viewed Allawi's comments as "political manoeuvring," as talks continue over the creation of an Iraqi government.

In the interview, Allawi – a legislator who heads the Iraqi National List, a secular alliance of Shia and Sunni politicians – said the violence in the country is moving toward "the point of no return."

The bombing of a Shia Muslim shrine in the Iraqi city of Samarra on Feb. 22 spurred an increase in civil violence, as Shia and Sunni Muslims launched attacks on each other.

The bombing also further strained talks between Shia, Sunni and Kurdish legislators, who have been trying to agree on the makeup of a new government since the election in December 2005.

Cheney says militants failed to start civil war

Both U.S. and British leaders have repeatedly denied that Iraq is in a state of civil war.

U.S. Vice-President Dick Cheney derided talk of civil war in Iraq during an interview with the CBS television program Face the Nation on Sunday morning.

"What we've seen is a serious effort by them to foment a civil war," Cheney said. "But I don't think they've been successful."

'It is a civil war': Democrat legislator

One of the most passionate critics of the war effort, Representative Jack Murtha – a Democrat from Pennsylvania and a respected war veteran – weighed in on the Sunday morning circuit of U.S. network news shows.

"We're caught in a civil war, however you want to look at it," he told NBC's Meet the Press. "First of all, they said there is no insurgency. Then they said it's not a civil war.

"It is a civil war. Twenty-five thousand insurgents are fighting with each other inside the country for supremacy. That's the definition of a civil war."

Bush defends war as start of Iraq's liberation

U.S. President George W. Bush, in a brief speech at the White House on Sunday, called the invasion that started three years ago the beginning of the liberation of Iraq.

He said he was encouraged by the work of Iraqi leaders to "get this government up and running." He also said his country has a strategy that will "lead to victory in Iraq and make the U.S. more secure and ensure peace for generations to come."

In a Washington Post column published on Sunday, U.S. Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld argued that the insurgents "seem to recognize that they are losing in Iraq."

He added that withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq now "would be the modern equivalent of handing postwar Germany back to the Nazis."