Fewer homes in Iraq have electrical power now than before the U.S. invasion in 2003. Iraqi civilians die on city streets daily, victims of a growing war between the occupying forces of the United States and the insurgents who are much better at waging war than American soldiers.

Instead of liberating Iraq we have driven it deeper into poverty, despair and danger. Instead of bringing freedom to the nation we have brought anarchy, death and disruption. Polls of Iraqi citizens show they are angry at the United States for what they see as the destruction of their nation.

I talked recently with a National Guardsman home on leave. He says Americans are hated, despised and feared by those they were supposed to have liberated.

"We worked with an interpreter, an Iraqi who faces retaliation from the insurgents for helping the military, and he told the recently that Iraq would be better off today is we had never invaded their country and had left Saddam Hussein in power," said the guardsman, who asked that his name not be used because he fear retaliation by his commanding officers if he speaks out. "If what he says is true, then why are we there? Why have friends of mine died?"

Why indeed? With a majority of Americans now believing President George W. Bush lied to justify his invasion of Iraq and an even larger majority saying the invasion was a mistake, the question should be: How many more must die, Iraqi and American, before this country admits it was wrong.

Saddam Hussein was a dictator and despot. There's no doubt about that. He killed thousands upon thousands of his own people in periodic purges.

But Americans have proven themselves capable of atrocities. On March 15, near Balad, Iraqi police reported:

"American forces used helicopters to drop troops on the house of Faiz Harat Khalaf situated in the Abu Sifa village of the Ishaqi district. The American forces gathered the family members in one room and executed 11 people, including five children, four women and two men, then they bombed the house, burned three vehicles and killed their animals."

The report continued: "autopsies revealed that all the victims had bullet shots in the head and all bodies were handcuffed."

In Haditha late last year, on November 15, Marines carried out revenge after an insurgent bomb attack on a U.S. force. A nine-year-old survivor of that massacre told Time magazine: "First, they went into my father's room, where he was reading the Koran, and we heard shots. I couldn't see their faces very well, only their guns sticking into the doorway. I watched them shoot my grandfather first in the chest and then in the head. Then they killed my granny." The Marines killed 15 Iraqis, including women and children. The Pentagon said they were insurgents but no connection with the insurgency was ever established.

Because of incidents like this, many Iraqis feel America, as an occupying force, is no better than Saddam or other butchers in history. Illinois Congressman Richard Durbin recently compared American fighters to "Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime--Pol Pot or others--that had no concern for human beings." Durbin later apologized for the remarks but it is easy to understand his frustration at our behavior in Iraq.

In March, Iraqi civilians died at the rate of 75 day. While most of these deaths came at the hands of insurgents, it is clear that too many Iraqis also die from American atrocities. In war, where victory is measured by perception and attrition, America may have already lost.

"I think the calculation on the part of the insurgency now is that if this gets into a war of attrition and significant civil conflict, they've defeated the U.S. anyhow," said Anthony Cordesman, an expert on the Iraq conflict at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

The world has always had its dictators and many still exist today in places like North Korea and China. Even our so-called "allies" in the Middle East, like Saudi Arabia or Dubai, are nowhere near the kind of Western-style democracies the U.S. is trying to ram down Iraq's throats.

Iraq posed no immediate threat to the U.S. We know that now. I suspect our elected leaders knew it before the invasion but chose to withhold that information from the American people, Congress and our allies. Such conduct is considered criminal in most civilized societies but America ceased to be a civilized place a long time ago. A civilized society does not torture civilians or massacre women and children.

America is a bully, an international thug that uses fear, lies and deceit to advance the personal agendas of its leaders. Bullies do not deserve respect. Bullies do not deserve the benefit of the doubt. Bullies are beneath contempt.

Unfortunately, as long as Americans tolerate the despotic rule of George W. Bush, we share responsibility for the shame our leadership has brought upon a once-great nation called the United States of America.

In another key development, Saddam Hussein was charged for genocide for the first time over his Anfal military campaign against Kurds from 1987-1988 that left around 180,000 people dead.

Talks on forming a national unity government were shelved despite stern warnings from US Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice and her British counterpart Jack Straw who left Iraq Monday after an unprecedented two-day visit.

The formation of the first permanent post-Saddam government has been delayed due to bitter wrangling over key ministerial posts and the premiership, with non-Shiite factions opposing the candidacy of incumbent prime minister Ibrahim Jaafari.

The political vacuum saw Rice and Straw earlier this week voice their frustration at the lack of political progress, although the two refrained from any direct reference as to who should lead the cabinet.

Splits have appeared in the dominant conservative Shiite grouping, the United Iraqi Alliance, over the key sticking point of whether Jaafari should lead the new government.

"The ball is in the court of the alliance who have to take a final decision on Jaafari," a lawmaker from one of the key partners in the alliance, Mohammed Ismail Khazali of the Fadhila party, told AFP.

"I call upon a parliament session to decide on this issue as the alliance has been unable to decide till now."

Though the reason for Tuesday's shelving of talks were not announced, sources closes to negotiations said the Shiite alliance was holding intense internal talks to decide on the issue of Jaafari.

It was also not clear whether the talks will commence again Wednesday.

Kurdish, secular and Sunni politicians from other blocs involved in government negotiations have indicated their dissatisfaction with Jaafari, blaming him for not being able to stem the violence or rein in sectarian tendencies of several ministers.

President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, has supported the anti-Jaafari campaign.

"Our attitude towards Jaafari does not reflect that we are against his Dawa party of the Shiite alliance," Talabani told reporters Tuesday.

Expressing optimism over the talks to form the national unity government, he said "all political blocs were keen for an early resolution and ready to make compromises."

He said the political deliberations will not take more than two weeks.

For the United States, a national unity government is essential to their plans for an eventual withdrawal of troops from Iraq.

Meanwhile, the Iraqi High Tribunal said that Saddam and six others would be tried on genocide charges over the Anfal campaign against Kurds that left an estimated 180,000 people dead.

Saddam's six co-defendants include Ali Hassan al-Majid, also known as Chemical Ali and notorious for ordering the gassing of Halabja in 1988 which killed 5,000 people, chief investigating judge Raed al-Juhi told reporters.

"The investigation has been completed for the Anfal campaign and the seven accused have been referred to the court for genocide," he said.

The announcement came as the trial of Saddam and seven others for the massacre of 141 Shiite villagers from Dujail resumes Wednesday.

Aside from Saddam and Majid, others in the dock will include former minister of defense Sultan Hashem Ahmed and high ranking Baathists Saber Abdel Aziz, Hussein Rashid al-Tikriti, Taher Mohammed al-Ani and Farhan al-Juburi.

Meanwhile, the violence on the ground escalated with dozens of US and Iraqi casualties.

At least 23 people died Tuesday in violence around the country, including a car bomb that struck eastern Baghdad.

Ten people were killed and around 25 wounded in the explosion of a car bomb parked in the al-Habibiyah neighborhood, a security source said.

Police found 18 bodies around Baghdad, many of them tortured and riddled with bullets. Dozens of bodies have been dumped in the capital in wake of the outbreak of sectarian strife since the February 22 bombing of a Shiite shrine in Samarra.

The US military has also experienced one of its deadliest periods over the past few days, with at least 15 servicemen reported to have lost their lives in rebel violence and a flash flood.

Late Tuesday the military said it found one of the bodies of marines missing after a deadly road accident caused by the flash flood in Iraq's western Al-Anbar province Sunday. It had earlier declared five marines dead in the accident.

The bodies of a marine and a sailor remain missing from the accident near Haditha when a truck in a convoy rolled over.

About 2,340 US servicemen have died since the March 2003 invasion in Iraq.

Meanwhile, the Iraqi cabinet said three insurgents were killed, including one known as the "Prince of Princes", in an operation in Tarmiya, just north Baghdad. The release gave no further detail about the "prince".

A court in Iraq's northern Kurdistan region sentenced to death 12 members of militant group Ansar al-Islam for numerous killings and explosions, an Arbil judiciary official said.

Terri Librizzi, 78, of the Milwaukee suburbs of Shorewood, was among the 70 percent of voters in the village to approve the measure. "Maybe if George Bush's daughters would have to go into the service, the war would end tomorrow," Librizzi said.

But Sister Bay resident Peter Trenchard said he wasn't surprised voters in his village voted down the measure. He said many people there did not approve of the war in the first place, but they don't see pulling troops out as a solution.

"Logic tells you you can't pull out of there. It would be a mess," said Trenchard, 67.

Most of the referendums asked whether the voters supported withdrawing the troops immediately, and Evansville also had one urging support of President Bush.

In the Columbia County town of Newport, voters rejected a referendum asking whether the United States should hand operational command of Iraq's national security over to the Iraqi government before the end of 2006.

Bush has refused to set a deadline for the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq. Fifty-one soldiers from Wisconsin have died in Iraq since the invasion three years ago.

Geralyn Lu, 50, of Madison, voted to withdraw the troops in that city's referendum. "So many lives lost in a futile war. I didn't want them there in the first place," she said.

But Katy Hampton, 53, of Monona, said if the soldiers leave Iraq, the country will descend into chaos. That's why she voted against bringing the soldiers back, she said.

"There's still not a firm government in place," Hampton said. "I don't want it to be a mess. They should follow it through."

However, Rice did not say when all U.S. forces would return home and did not directly answer Rep. Steven Rothman, D-N.J., when he asked, "Will the bases be permanent or not?"

"I would think that people would tell you, we're not seeking permanent bases really pretty much anywhere in the world these days. We are, in fact, in the process of removing base structure from a lot of places," Rice replied.

"I can't foresee the future of whether or not there will be some need for American forces for some period of time," she added. "But I can tell you that our discussions with the Iraqis are about getting them capable to defend, not just against their internal insurgency and internal enemies, but also to be able to be a responsible and defensible state within the region."

Earlier Tuesday, President Bush urged Iraq to move quickly to form a unity government, calling on elected leaders "to stand up and do their job." He said the formation of a new government would give Iraqis confidence in their future.

Bush's statement, during a brief question-and-answer session with reporters at the White House, came on the heels of a similar admonition by Rice during a visit to Iraq. She had spoken of a "sense of drift" nearly four months after Iraqis held parliamentary elections.

Bush said insurgents were using violence to prevent democracy from taking hold. "One way to help bring confidence to the Iraqi people that those few will not be able to determine the future of that country is for there to be unity government that steps up and says, 'I'm willing to lead.'"

On Captiol Hill, Rice testified before the House panel just hours after returning to the United States from a weeklong trip to Europe that included a surprise detour to Iraq. She and British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw met with nearly all of Iraq's squabbling factions for two days of diplomatic talks.

Republican and Democratic lawmakers increasingly are questioning just how long U.S. troops will remain in Iraq, especially given what appear to be construction projects at military bases Iraq and polls that show Iraqis believe the United States plans to keep permanent bases in their country.

Iraq's interim prime minister, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, has said he opposes permanent foreign bases. American public opinion is against them as well.

Last month, Bush said that American forces will remain in Iraq for years and it will be up to a future president to decide when to bring them all home.

Appearing before the House subcommittee, Rice defended U.S. efforts to rebuild Iraq's essential services, such as electricity, even though progress has been hampered by security problems. She said the United States has made important investments in rebuilding the structures to provide such services.

"We believe that they will pay off," she said.

However, Rice acknowledged problems with security as well as "some corruption problems in some of the ministries." She said the United States is urging Iraqi officials to correct the issues so that reconstruction can proceed unhampered.

Rice also:

_Defended the United States' efforts to help Afghanistan eradicate poppy crops and the Bush administration's public plan to invest $75 million into U.S. democracy programs aimed at strengthening ties with the Iranian people.

"On this one I don't think speaking softly about the democracy problem in Iran is really the appropriate course. I think we do have to be very public about it," Rice said.

_Said it would be helpful for the African Union to "put its full weight" behind putting together a U.N. peacekeeping force in the war-ravaged Darfur region.

"There are sometimes mixed signals from the African Union about how they view this. There are sometimes mixed signals out of the Arab League about how they view this," Rice said.