Her husband eventually surrendered to the U.S. military, but she continued to be held "to apply pressure on him to confess things he never did," she said. "They told him they would rape me right in front of him if he did not confess he was a terrorist. They forced me to watch them beat him hard until he told them what they wanted to hear."

The Organisation for Women's Freedom in Iraq has estimated from anecdotal evidence that over 2,000 Iraqi women have gone missing in the period from the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003 until spring 2006.

But numbers are not always reliable here. Thousands of cases of abduction of women are never reported for fear of public disgrace.

According to a study published by the Washington-based Brookings Institute Dec. 4, between 30 to 40 Iraqis were being kidnapped every day as of March this year. "The numbers on this table may be lower than the actual number of kidnappings as the Iraqi Police suggest wide underreporting," the study noted.

These estimated numbers have drastically increased from a reported rate of two kidnappings a day in Baghdad in January 2004, and are up from the 10 a day reported in the capital city in December 2004 according to this study.

Untold numbers of women, believed by many to be in the thousands, have been abducted for money, and others have been abducted for sectarian reasons. "My family had to pay 30,000 dollars to have me released," a 25year-old woman told IPS, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Several abducted women have later been found dead, sometimes beheaded. Others are never seen again.

Fifty-two-year-old Um Wasseem from Baghdad was abducted by U.S. forces and held at the Baghdad airport detention camp, her family said. She was eventually released after political pressure from family and friends who had some political muscle.

"I wish she had not been released," her 20-year-old son told IPS. "Militias then abducted her, and we found her body torn to pieces in March this year."

Many Iraqi academics and aid workers say most of those being kidnapped now are women.

"Women in Iraq used go to work, participate in social activities and even take part in politics," sociologist Shatha al-Dulaimy told IPS in Baghdad. "Iraqi women studied and worked side by side with men, and they formed at least 35 percent of the national working power in various fields of work until the U.S. occupation came. The occupation has brought nothing but suffering, death or kidnapping to women here now."

The U.S. administration promised Iraqi women a better life with new opportunities, but the reality after three-and-a-half years of occupation is far different. Iraqi women were promised 25 percent of the seats in parliament. As it turned, out, the Iraqi National Assembly has 85 women in a total of 275 members following elections held Dec. 15, 2005. But that has not translated into more rights for women across Iraq.

"We are just a part of the décor arranged by Americans who wanted to convince the world of the 'tremendous' change in Iraq," a female member of the Iraqi parliament told IPS on condition of anonymity. "Our (women's) voice is never heard inside or outside parliament."

Female members of the new Iraqi Parliament take little part in major political decisions or when it comes to forming committees. Many female members were elected for religious or tribal reasons, she said.

The MP expressed concern over a rise in "religious extremism" because people are being "led by clerics who spent their lives learning how to make women obey their orders and present them with the best services at home." Such extremism has been a large factor in the rising number of women being kidnapped, she said.

"What women's rights," said 38-year-old schoolteacher Assmaa Fadhil. "Those who talk about it are ignorant people who want women to be slaves and concubines rather than partners in life. They are using old traditions to crush women and keep them away from any real participation in society."

Fadhil says lack of respect for women's rights has increased the threat of women getting abducted simply as they step out of their homes.

"Most of us now stay at home unless we absolutely must go out for food," Fadhil said. "Because we know so many women who have been kidnapped, it is only a matter of time for us if we continue traveling around the city."

Denial of rights for women in the name of Islam is not what Islam is all about, Sheikh Ahmed of the Sunni religious group, the Association of Muslim Scholars, told IPS. "Muslim women are granted full rights of work and social participation. It is tradition that limits women's activity nowadays, rather than religion."

Most Iraqi women are fearful about their future as long as the country is led by Islamists.

The report of James A. Baker's Iraq Study Group has already become a benchmark for Iraq policy, dominating the print and electronic media for several days after its release, and generating excited commentary by all manner of leadership types from Washington to London to Baghdad. Even if most of the commentary continues to be negative, we can nevertheless look forward to highly publicized policy changes in the near future that rely for their justification on this report, or on one of the several others recently released, or on those currently being prepared by the Pentagon, the White House, and the National Security Council.

This is not, however, good news for those of us who want the U.S. to end its war of conquest in Iraq. Quite the contrary: The ISG report is not an "exit strategy;" it is a new plan for achieving the Bush administration's imperial goals in the Middle East.

The ISG report stands out among the present flurry of re-evaluations as the sole evaluation of the war by a group not beholden to the President; as the only report containing an unadorned negative evaluation of the current situation (vividly captured in the oft-quoted phrase "dire and deteriorating"); and as the only public document with unremitting criticism of the Bush administration's conduct of the war.

It is this very negativity that brings into focus the severely constrained nature of the debate now underway in Washington -- most importantly, the fact that U.S. withdrawal from Iraq (immediate or otherwise) is simply not going to be part of the discussion. Besides explicitly stating that withdrawal is a terrible idea -- "our leaving would make [the situation] worse" -- the Baker report is built around the idea that the United States will remain in Iraq for a very long time.

To put it bluntly, the ISG is not calling on the Bush administration to abandon its goal of creating a client regime that was supposed to be the key to establishing the U.S. as the dominant power in the Middle East. Quite the contrary. As its report states: "We agree with the goal of U.S. policy in Iraq." If you ignore the text sprinkled with sugar-coated words like "representative government," the report essentially demands that the Iraqi government pursue policies shaped to serve "America's interest and values in the years ahead."

Don't be fooled by this often quoted passage from the report: "By the first quarter of 2008, subject to unexpected developments in the security situation on the ground, all combat brigades not necessary for force protection could be out of Iraq." The ebullient interpretations of this statement by the media have been misleading in three different ways.

First, the combat brigades mentioned in this passage represent far less than half of all the troops in Iraq. The military police, the air force, the troops that move the equipment, those assigned to the Green Zone, the soldiers that order, store, and move supplies, medical personnel, intelligence personnel, and so on, are not combat personnel; and they add up to considerably more than 70,000 of the approximately 140,000 troops in Iraq at the moment. They will all have to stay -- as well as actual combat forces to protect them and to protect the new American advisors who are going to flood into the Iraqi army -- because the Iraqi army has none of these units and isn't going to develop them for several years, if ever.

Second, the ISG wants those "withdrawn" American troops "redeployed," either inside or outside Iraq. In all likelihood, this will mean that at least some of them will be stationed in the five permanent bases inside Iraq that the Bush administration has already spent billions constructing, and which are small American towns, replete with fast food restaurants, bus lines, and recreation facilities. There is no other place to put these redeployed troops in the region, except bases in Kuwait, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates, none of which are really suited to, or perhaps eager to, host a large influx of American troops (guaranteed to be locally unpopular and a magnet for terrorist attacks).

Third, it's important not to ignore those two modest passages: "subject to unexpected developments in the security situation on the ground" and "not necessary for force protection." In other words, if the Iraqi troops meant to replace the redeployed American ones are failures, then some or all of the troops might never be redeployed. In addition, even if Iraqi troops did perform well, Americans might still be deemed necessary to protect the remaining (non-combat) troops from attack by insurgents and other forces. Given that American troops have not been able to subdue the Sunni rebellion, which is still on a growth curve, it is highly unlikely that their Iraqi substitutes will do any better. In other words, even if the "withdrawal" parts of the Baker report were accepted by the President, which looks increasingly unlikely, its plan has more holes and qualifications than Swiss cheese.

Put another way, no proposal at present on the table in Washington is likely to result in significant reductions even in the portion of American troops defined as "combat brigades." That is why this statement says that the combat troops "could be out of Iraq," not "will be out of Iraq" in the first quarter of 2008.

So, the ISG report contemplates -- best case scenario -- "a considerable military presence in the region, with our still significant [at least 70,000 strong] force in Iraq, and with our powerful air, ground, and naval deployments in Kuwait, Bahrain, and Qatar..." Given a less-than-optimum scenario, the American presence in Iraq would assumedly remain much higher, perhaps even approaching current levels. As if this isn't bad news enough, the report is laced with qualifiers indicating that the ISG members fear their new strategy might not work, that "there is no magic formula to solve the problems of Iraq" -- a theme that will certainly be picked up this week as the right-wing of the Republican Party and angry neocons continue to blast at the report.

Danger to Empire

Why was the Iraq Study Group so reluctant to advocate the withdrawal of American troops and the abandonment of the Bush administration's goal of pacifying Iraq? The likely explanation is: Its all-establishment membership (and the teams of experts that gave it advice) understood that withdrawing from Iraq would be an imperially momentous decision. It would, in fact, mean the abandonment of over two decades of American foreign policy in the Middle East. To grasp this, it's helpful to compare the way most Americans look at the war in Iraq to the way those in power view it.

Most Americans initially believed that the U.S. went into Iraq to shut down Saddam Hussein's WMD programs and/or simply to topple a dangerous dictator (or even a dictator somehow connected to the 9/11 attacks). Of course, had that really been the case, the Bush administration should have withdrawn almost immediately. Even today, it could, at least theoretically, withdraw and declare victory the day after Saddam Hussein is executed, since the WMDs and the 9/11 connection were evanescent. In this scenario, the dismal post-invasion military failure would represent nothing but the defeat of Bush's personal crusade -- articulated only after the Hussein regime was toppled -- to bring American-style democracy to a benighted land.

Because of this, most people, whether supporters or opponents of the war, expect each new round of policy debates to at least consider the option of withdrawal; and many hold out the hope that Bush will finally decide to give up his democratization pipe dream. Even if Bush is incapable of reading the handwriting on the Iraqi wall, this analysis encourages us to hope that outside advisers like the ISG will be "pragmatic" enough to bring the message home to him, before the war severely undermines our country economically and in terms of how people around the world think about us.

However, a more realistic look at the original goals of the invasion makes clear why withdrawal cannot be so easily embraced by anyone loyal to the grandiose foreign policy goals adopted by the U.S. right after the fall of the Soviet Union. The real goals of the war in Iraq add up to an extreme version of this larger vision of a "unipolar world" orbiting around the United States.

The invasion of 2003 reflected the Bush administration's ambition to establish Iraq as the hub of American imperial dominance in the oil heartlands of the planet. Unsurprisingly, then, the U.S. military entered Iraq with plans already in hand to construct and settle into at least four massive military bases that would become nerve centers for our military presence in the "arc of instability" extending from Central Asia all the way into Africa -- an "arc" that just happened to contain the bulk of the world's exportable oil.

The original plan included wresting control of Iraqi oil from Saddam's hostile Baathist government and delivering it into the hands of the large oil companies through the privatization of new oil fields and various other special agreements. It was hoped that privatized Iraqi oil might then break OPEC's hold on the global oil spigot. In the Iraq of the Bush administration's dreams, the U.S. would be the key player in determining both the amount of oil pumped and the favored destinations for it. (This ambition was implicitly seconded by the Baker Commission when it recommended that the U.S. "should assist Iraqi leaders to reorganize the national oil industry as a commercial enterprise")

All of this, of course, was contingent upon establishing an Iraqi government that would be a junior partner in American Middle Eastern policy; that, under the rule of an Ahmed Chalabi or Iyad Allawi, would, for instance, be guaranteed to support administration campaigns against Iran and Syria. Bush administration officials have repeatedly underscored this urge, even in the present circumstances, by attempting, however ineffectively, to limit the ties of the present Shia-dominated Iraqi government to Iran.

Withdrawal from Iraq would signal the ruin of all these hopes. Without a powerful American presence, permanent bases would not be welcomed by any regime that might emerge from the current cauldron in Baghdad; every faction except the Kurds is adamantly against them. U.S. oil ambitions would prove similarly unviable. Though J. Paul Bremer, John Negroponte and Zalmay Khalilzad, our three ambassador-viceroys in Baghdad, have all pushed through legislation mandating the privatization of oil (even embedding this policy in the new constitution), only a handful of top Iraqi politicians have actually embraced the idea. The religious leaders who control the Sunni militias oppose it, as do the Sadrists, who are now the dominant faction in the Shia areas. The current Iraqi government is already making economic treaties with Iran and even sought to sign a military alliance with that country that the Americans aborted.

Still Staying the Course

Added to all this, from Lebanon to Pakistan, the administration's political agenda for the "arc of instability" is now visibly in a state of collapse. This agenda, of course, predated Bush, going back to the moment in 1991 when the Soviet Union simply evaporated, leaving an impoverished Russia and a set of wobbly independent states in its place. While the elder George Bush and Bill Clinton did not embrace the use of the military as the primary instrument of foreign policy, they fully supported the goal of American preeminence in the Middle East and worked very hard to achieve it -- through the isolation of Iran, sanctions against Iraq, various unpublicized military actions against Saddam's forces, and a ratcheting upward of permanent basing policies throughout the Gulf region and Central Asia.

This is the context for the peculiar stance taken by the Iraq Study Group towards the administration's disaster in Iraq. Coverage has focused on the way the report labeled the situation as "grave and deteriorating" and on its call for negotiations with the previously pariah states of Iran and Syria. In itself, the negotiation proposal is perfectly reasonable and has the side effect of lessening the possibility that the Bush administration will launch an attack on Iranian nuclear facilities in the near future.

But no one should imagine that the "new" military strategy proposed by Baker and his colleagues includes dismissing the original goals of the war. In their letter of transmittal, ISG co-chairs James Baker and Lee Hamilton declared: "All options have not been exhausted. We believe it is still possible to pursue different policies that can give Iraq an opportunity for a better future, combat terrorism, stabilize a critical region of the world and protect America's credibility, interests and values."

This statement, couched in typical Washington-speak, reiterates those original ambitious goals and commits the ISG to a continuing effort to achieve them. The corpus of the report does nothing to dispel that assertion. Its military strategy calls for a (certainly quixotic) effort to use Iraqi troops to bring about the military victory American troops have failed for three years to achieve. The diplomatic initiatives call for a (certainly quixotic) effort to enlist the aid of Syria and Iran, as well as Saudi Arabia and other neighbors, in defeating the insurgency. And the centerpiece of the economic initiatives seeks to accelerate the process of privatizing oil, the clearest sign of all that Baker and Hamilton -- like Bush and his circle -- remain committed to the grand scheme of maintaining the United States as the dominant force in the region.

Even as the group called on the President to declare that the U.S. "does not seek permanent military bases in Iraq" once the country is secure, it immediately hedged this intention by pointing out that we "could consider" temporary bases, "if the Iraqi government were to request it." Of course, if the Bush administration were somehow to succeed in stabilizing a compliant client regime, such a regime would surely request that American troops remain in their "temporary" bases on a more-or-less permanent basis, since its survival would depend on them.

Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of the ISG report is its embrace of the Bush administration's imperial attitude toward the Iraqi government. Although the report repeatedly calls for American "respect" for Iraqi "sovereignty" (an implicit criticism of the last three years of Iraq policy), it also offers a series of what are essentially non-negotiable demands that would take an already weak and less-than-sovereign government and strip it of control over anything that makes governments into governments.

As a start, the "Iraqi" military would be flooded with 10,000-20,000 new American "advisors," ensuring that it would continue to be an American-controlled military, even if a desperately poor and recalcitrant one, into the distant future. In addition, the ISG offered a detailed program for how oil should be extracted (and the profits distributed) as well as specific prescriptions for handling a number of pressing problems, including fiscal policy, militias, the city of Kirkuk, sectarianism, de-Baathification, and a host of other issues that normally would be decisions for an Iraqi government, not an American advisory panel in Washington. It is hardly surprising, then, that Iraqi leaders almost immediately began complaining that the report, for all its bows to "respect," completely lacked it.

Most striking is the report's twenty-first (of 79) recommendations, aimed at describing what the United States should do if the Iraqis fail to satisfactorily fulfill the many tasks that the ISG has set for them: "If the Iraqi government does not make substantial progress toward the achievement of milestones on national reconciliation, security, and governance, the United States should reduce its political, military, or economic support for the Iraqi government."

This could be interpreted as a threat that the United States will withdraw -- and the mainstream media has chosen to interpret it just that way. But why then did Baker and his colleagues not word this statement differently? ("... the United States should reduce, and ultimately withdraw, its forces from Iraq.") The phrase "reduce its political, military, or economic support for the Iraqi government" is probably better interpreted literally: that if that government fails to satisfy ISG demands, the U.S. should transfer its "political, military, or economic support" to a new leadership within Iraq that it feels would be more capable of making "substantial progress toward" the milestones it has set. In other words, this passage is more likely a threat of a coup d'état than a withdrawal strategy -- a threat that the façade of democracy would be stripped away and a "strong man" (or a government of "national salvation") installed, one that the Bush administration or the ISG believes could bring the Sunni rebellion to heel.

Here is the unfortunate thing. Evidently, the "grave and deteriorating" situation in Iraq has not yet deteriorated enough to convince even establishment American policymakers, who have been on the outside these last years, to follow the lead of the public (as reflected in the latest opinion polls) and abandon their soaring ambitions of Middle East domination. If they haven't done so, imagine where George W. Bush and Dick Cheney are in policy terms. So far, it seems everyone of power or influence in Washington remains committed to "staying the course."

Michael Schwartz is a professor of sociology and faculty director of the Undergraduate College of Global Studies at Stony Brook University.

For the likes of Cheney, the idea has some obvious appeal. Join the Shiites in wiping out a good chunk of the Sunni population, and you take the wind out of the Sunni insurgency and also lose the major Shiites parties' justification for their militias.

The problem is that it's a policy that would veer dangerously close to genocide, and it would likely spark the regional war that many of us have feared for some time. The Saudis announced that they would, if need be, intervene to defend Iraq's Shiite Sunni population. According to reports, Saudi actors -- if not the government -- are already supporting the Sunni insurgency with financial aid. If they intervened in a more direct way, the Iranians would have no choice but to respond.

At the same time, as my friend Peter at The Thinker points out, the DoD is mulling over a major offensive against the Mahdi army:

...strong support has coalesced in the Pentagon behind a military plan to "double down" in the country with a substantial buildup in American troops, an increase in industrial aid and a major combat offensive against Muqtada Sadr, the radical Shiite leader impeding development of the Iraqi government.

Actually, he's impeding the development of a pro-U.S. or pro-Iranian government, not an Iraqi one. Al Sadr controls 30 seats in the Iraqi parliament officially, and another eight or so informally. Going after him aggressively would effectively end the occupation -- making Iraq ungovernable for the occupation forces and the government they established.

Meanwhile, while we won't talk to Iran, the administration appears to be favoring its proxies in Iraq.

Rep. Jim McDermott (D-WA) recently returned from a fact-finding trip to Jordan, and here are some excerpts from comments he gave on the House floor last week:

While the President is unwilling to talk to Iran, his policies in Iraq - in reality - are allowing Iran to take over Iraq.

And, if we don't recognize and act on this soon, Iran will succeed.

This is real, not rhetorical. Actions by the President through his appointed surrogate to run Iraq--- Paul Bremmer--- that date back to the first days of the U.S. invasion --- have created a situation today that makes Iraq a prime candidate for what Iran could never accomplish on its own, militarily. That is--- taking over Iraq, its oil, its infrastructure, even its existence as a separate nation.

Iran couldn't successfully invade Iraq, but we did, and we are playing right into the hands of the Iranians by not acting on what Iraqis see happening.

The media portrays an overly simplistic picture of the sectarian struggle. We hear a lot about Shite and Sunni Iraqis, but we don't hear about Persian Arabs ---- that is Iran. And Persian versus Arab is where the real battle for Iraq will be won or lost.

Every time the President meets with Iranian Shia clerics, he confirms in the Iraqi Arab minds, both Sunni and Arab [he meant Shiite], that he is ceding control to Iranians.

It began with Bremmer's decision to give the Shia the majority on the Governing Council. Then, his decision to disband the Iraqi Army and the Baathist technocratic government further confirmed the Arab feeling that the US, despite its protests to the contrary, was opening up Iraq to an Iranian takeover.

This is not my speculation. This is what moderate Mideast leaders told me in face-to-face meetings I attended in Amman, Jordan, recently.

Moderate leaders desperately want the American people to understand what is really going on, because they see that as perhaps their last hope for getting this President to get it.

To the Iraqi Arabs, there are only two explanations to account for Paul Bremmer's actions: a blunder based on ignorance of the history of the region; or, a deliberate decision to neutralize Iraq as a strong Arab secular nation, thereby making it more susceptible to U.S. influence in the future.

As moderates in the region see it, the President- and, therefore, America, continue to openly act in ways that enable an Iranian takeover.

Just the other day, the President met with the leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, Abdul Aziz Hakim, in the White House. [snip]

Much more on that from Juan Cole, here.

Moderates in the region told me the resistance in Iraq is based on the U.S. occupation and a power grab by Persian controlled clerics. Blaming it all on Sunni-Shia tensions is not just incorrect, they say, it is exactly what Iran hopes, because it leaves them out.

[snip]

Failure by the President to understand it's Persian versus Arab --- Iran versus Iraq--- has produced one disastrous decision after another. The solution, they believe, is obvious: strategically re-deploy US troops out of harm's way to close the Iranian border and stop the infiltration of Iranian agents into Iraq.

Arab leaders told me they estimate that as many as 14,000 Persians have infiltrated to run death squads who kill Arab Sunnis and incite a civil war ---- as cover for the real war--- Iran versus Iraq.

Unless we change course, the day will come when the only banner proclaiming Mission Accomplished will be flown by Iran. We can't let that happen.

What's important here is that much of what we hear about "sectarian violence" is overly simplistic; there are overlapping conflicts in Iraq, and significant tension within both the Sunni and Shiite communities. Rifts between Shiite nationalists -- represented primarily by Muqtada al Sadr -- and the pro-Iranian Shiites represented in parliament by SCIRI and on the streets by its armed wing, the Badr Brigade, led to violence in the South not long ago.

What McDermott can't say is that Iran's 'mission accomplished' banner has been flying high for some time now, and it's unlikely they'll end up looking stupid photographed beneath it like some Commander-in-Chiefs I could name. It's hard to over-estimate the degree to which Bush's "War on terror" has put Iran in the cat-bird's seat -- after all, Iran's most significant adversaries on September 10, 2001 were A) Saddam Hussein's Iraq, B) the U.S. and C) the Taliban in Afghanistan -- two are now gone and the third is tied up, isolated politically from its allies and facing a potential disaster for its troops if it were to move against Tehran.

Anyway, there's a fine-line to be navigated here. It's important to highlight the dangers inherent in taking sides with Iraq's Shiites against the Sunnis. At the same time, one must be careful not to play into the hands of the 'bomb Iraq' crew by focusing too much on Tehran's cross-border shenanigans -- talk about it, but be cautious about portraying Iran as a direct security threat to the United States.

A congressional delegation including senators John McCain and Joe Lieberman was in Baghdad to meet US commanders and Iraqi officials on a new way forward for the troubled mission.

As the lawmakers met reporters in the fortified Green Zone, a convoy of sports utilty vehicles of the type issued to government security forces was sealing off Rashid Street near the east bank of the Tigris.

Around 100 gunmen, in police uniform and brandishing the Glock pistols issued by the US military to Iraqi security forces, went from shop to shop stealing cash and seizing between 40 and 50 hostages, witnesses said.

"This area is under the authority of the interior ministry," said Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh afterwards. "The ministry has moved its forces in and the incident is under investigation."

Mass kidnappings are common in Baghdad. Some are carried out by sectarian death squads, but often the motive is purely criminal with the aim of ransoming hostages.

Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's US-backed government seems to have only nominal control over the city, which has been blitzed in recent weeks by deadly car bombings and which is patrolled by illegal militias.

Against this backdrop and amid collapsing public support for the war, US President George W. Bush is holding a flurry of meetings with foreign policy and military experts to draw up a new strategy.

Bush said he will not be rushed into a decision on a "new way forward" -- which his spokesman says will be announced in January -- but the lawmakers in McCain's delegation to Baghdad had some advice for him.

"The situation is very, very serious. It requires an injection of additional troops to control the situation and to allow the political process to proceed," said McCain.

Arizona's influential senator is widely seen as the frontrunner to win the Republican nomination to succeed Bush as president in 2008, and his views carry weight in conservative Washington circles.

McCain said reinforcments could be five to 10 brigades -- around 15,000 to 30,000 troops -- to support the 140,000-strong force already deployed.

American generals in Iraq have not publicly asked for more troops, and this week US operational commander Lieutenant General Peter Chiarelli said that rebuilding the economy was more important than reinforcements.

Iraqi leaders are also dubious about increasing the US presence, arguing instead that they should be given more direct control over their own government's forces which need more training and equipment.

There is one school of thought, however, that the US-led coalition should boost its Baghdad presence in the short term to restore order in a city wracked by sectarian violence that kills scores daily.

McCain and Lieberman also called on both Maliki and US forces to do more to break the influence of radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr and his 60,000-strong Mahdi Army militia.

"We should have arrested Moqtada al-Sadr three years ago," said McCain. "He continues to be a major obstacle to peace -- his influence in domestic politics needs to be eliminated dramatically."

While Sadr's movement enjoys the support of many urban poor, it also stands accused of sectarian murders and kidnappings, and often clashes with US and Iraqi security forces.

In recent weeks Bush has met two senior Iraqi leaders in Washington -- Shiite strongman Abdel Aziz Hakim and the country's Sunni vice-president, Tareq al-Hashemi -- in a bid to build a new ruling coalition.

On Wednesday, Bush spoke by telephone with Iraqi President Jalal Talabani and Kurdish regional President Massud Barzani as part of efforts to cement a "moderate bloc" behind the government, the White House said.

"We've talked in recent days about a moderate bloc that has Sunni, Shia, and Kurdish leaders," White House spokesman Tony Snow confirmed.

A new coalition could allow the premier to assert his authority over the gunmen, although many in Baghdad in fact see the alliance as a threat to Maliki himself, whom many blame for failing to disarm the militias.

Meanwhile, a car bomb in Mahaweel, 60 kilometres (37 miles) south of Baghdad, killed at least two people and wounded six, police said.

Two more people were killed and nine wounded in a suicide car bombing at an Iraqi army checkpoint in west Baghdad, the military said.

"I see everyone speaking in an Iraq accent," Lafta said. "Iraqi men singing Iraqi songs in the streets, Iraqi cafes, Iraqi shops.... I was opening a bank account here, so when the banker asked for my address, I replied that I live in Cairo's 6th of October neighborhood. He smiled and said, 'You Iraqis have invaded October.' "

An estimated 100,000 Iraqis leave their country each month, including many of Iraq's best educated professionals, part of the more than 1.6 million who have fled since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion. The Syrian government said Wednesday that it had taken in more than 800,000 Iraqis so far. Jordan has about 700,000, with tens of thousands more scattered across the Arab world. They have carried Iraq's civil strife into the incendiary politics of a region that is also navigating Iran's nuclear aspirations and turmoil in the Palestinian territories and Lebanon.

Iraqi refugees are accumulating much like the millions of displaced Palestinians who have flowed across the region for decades. Iraqis began trickling out during Saddam Hussein's regime, but their numbers steadily increased as their nation tumbled into civil war. The newest refugees are finding that compassion is fraying, prejudice growing and host countries, such as Jordan, are less welcoming.

A recent report by Human Rights Watch criticized Jordan for being slow in renewing visas for Iraqis who live "in the shadows, fearful and subject to exploitation." The report credited Jordan's past tolerance but it also said the country was now ignoring "the existence of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi refugees, does not address their needs for protection, and has not asked for international assistance on their behalf. It is a policy that can best be characterized as 'the silent treatment.' "

The Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees put it more starkly in a recent assessment: "Iraq is hemorrhaging. The humanitarian crisis which the international community had feared is now unfolding." Including those who have fled their homes but remained in the country, more than 10% of Iraq's prewar population of 26 million has been displaced.

*

'I'm ... ashamed'

The violence has been escalating for so long that it's difficult for refugees, most of whom are Sunni Arab Muslims, to pinpoint the exact horror that sent them rushing across borders. For many, like Khadem Salih, a 70-year-old retired lawyer, it was a numbing diary of suicide bombings, sectarian militia attacks and dusk-to-dawn bloodshed. Salih appeared at a Jordanian checkpoint two months ago. Interviewed at length by officials, he was granted only a one-month visa.

"I'm very much ashamed I left," said Salih, who lives in Amman, Jordan's capital. "Now, I'm struggling to get residency here, which will cost me at least $150,000. I am miserable to be forced to finally leave my country at the end stage of my life."

That misery reverberates like a relentless echo out of Iraq. Consider the fate of Laith Youssef, a shopkeeper who also ended up in Amman. An Iraqi gang threatened to kidnap his three children if he did not pay $40,000. Weeks later, a grenade exploded outside his shop, speckling his leg with shrapnel. Then he was jailed for 15 days for offending the Al Mahdi army, a Shiite militia. While he was imprisoned, his wife was attacked for not wearing strict Islamic dress in public.

Youssef and his family fled to Jordan, but even there, without the bombs and the beheadings, life is tough. Nearly half of Jordan's population consists of displaced Palestinians. The added influx of Iraqis, many of whom are educated and affluent, is straining a weak job market and raising the possibility of terrorist strikes in the kingdom.

"We're not stable," Youssef said. "I have no job because the law doesn't allow me to work, and if the police catch me working, they'll send me back to the Iraqi border. My wife takes care of elderly people, and sometimes we get aid from churches."

He added: "I don't deal with people here because I know if any problem happens I will be blamed. This is not my country. Jordan was kind enough to allow us in, but the number of Iraqis has increased more than this country can endure. Some Jordanians deal with us normally, but some, when they hear our Iraqi accent, look at us in a weird way."

Alliah Talib also has been stung by the eyes of her hosts. The director of an Iraqi organization for a free press, Talib, a Shiite, arrived in Cairo four months ago after militants accused her of working with foreign intelligence services.

This city is crowded, and sometimes she feels guilty about taking a seat on a bus, knowing that an Egyptian will have to stand. Such are the subconscious calculations of a nomad: a woman who prays that her money won't run out before her nation's cycle of killing has finished.

"I only watch Iraqi satellite TV channels here, so I can cry some more," she said. "I know that my friends and relatives are suffering in Iraq. I watch the news here to suffer with them.... When I go out and see Iraqis in [Cairo's] streets, I feel more secure. There is a common reason that made us all escape Iraq. Seeing that many others are participating or sharing the same lifestyle as you reduces the feeling of loneliness."

*

'Just give me security'

May Abassi knew it was time to leave Iraq when she began to think wistfully of the days of Hussein's rule. She and her husband and two young children fled through the smoke and funerals to Cairo. She has found that Egyptians are not like Iraqis. She said she planned to send her son to an English-language school so he would not pick up an Egyptian accent or play with boys she deemed too rough.

"I don't have anything against Egyptians," Abassi said. "They are good and welcoming, but we just can't mix with them.... If I feel the security in Baghdad improves, I will go back immediately. I don't want anything except security - even electricity and water are not important - just give me security, and I will go back. I feel a pain inside my heart when I see Baghdad burning."

Some of the refugees have begun new enterprises in new lands. Amid the camaraderie of the dispossessed, Raaid Lafta opened Studio Happy Time. A photographer who graduated with a fine arts degree from Baghdad University, Lafta left Iraq 14 months ago and landed in a Cairo neighborhood teeming with fellow Iraqis. Business is not so good, he said, but we "are out of harm's way."

"We formed an Iraqi company as investors, and we own this shop," he said. "Only a few Egyptians come in here. But ... Iraqis visit us a lot."

He will not stay here forever; a man belongs in the country where he drew his first breath, he said. But for now, the accent he hears in these alleys is the lilt of home; the faces are the people he knows. An Iraqi barber cuts his hair, an Iraqi baker bakes his bread. There are Iraqi Internet cafes; there are stories only Iraqis would know, or believe.

"To be honest with you," he said, "as I walk down the street of this city, I see all the Iraqi families spending time with their children. It really disappoints and annoys me because I wonder what made us and all these respectful families flee our homeland to live here as strangers."

Others, including Youssef, the shopkeeper in Amman, are preparing to be strangers for the rest of their lives. Youssef doesn't expect he'll see his old shop back on Nidhal Street or drive past the date palms in the now murderous Dora neighborhood in Baghdad. He recently applied for a visa to Australia.

"I doubt Iraq will ever be safe again," he said.

Iraqis seeking refuge

A recent U.N. report estimates more than 1.6 million Iraqis have fled their homeland since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion. The November report says 100,000 are leaving every month.

Estimated displaced Iraqis

Iraq* : 1.6 million

Syria: 800,000

Jordan: 700,000

Egypt: 100,000

Iran: 54,000

Lebanon: 20,000 to 40,000

*Internal refugees

--
Sources: Associated Press, Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Times reporting

Saudi Arabia has been concerned for months about rising domestic pressure on George Bush to bring US troops home from Iraq, despite the administration's avowals that it has no plans for a troop withdrawal. Those fears were exacerbated by the Iraq Study Group's report, which recommends the withdrawal of combat forces in Iraq in early 2008 as well as the opening of diplomatic negotiations between the US and Syria and Iran.

Since then Mr Bush has held consultations with the Pentagon and state department officials in what seems an attempt to show the White House's commitment to carrying out a broad-based review of its policy on Iraq. The White House said it would unveil its new strategy in January.

Yesterday's New York Times reported that during the Riyadh meeting the king also expressed strong opposition to the recommendation that Washington open diplomatic talks with Iran, and called for a resumption of peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians. King Abdullah said that Saudi Arabia would move quickly, but acknowledged that the intervention on behalf of Sunni tribal chiefs might help insurgent forces who have been fighting the Americans.

Saudi officials and the White House both denied the report.

"That's not Saudi government policy," the White House press secretary, Tony Snow, told reporters. "The Saudis have made it clear that they're committed to the same goals we are, which is a self-sustaining Iraq that can sustain, govern and defend itself, that will recognise and protect the rights of all, regardless of sect or religion," he said. "And furthermore, they share our concerns about the role the Iranians are playing in the region."

In Baghdad the military spokesman, Major General William Caldwell, was also sceptical. "I don't think that came from the government of Saudi Arabia," he said.

But Kenneth Pollack of the Brookings Institution told CNN that Saudi Arabia had strong motivation to take sides in a civil war. "They're terrified that civil war will spill over into Saudi Arabia. But they're also terrified that the Iranians, backing the various Shi'ite militias in Iraq, will come out the big winner in a civil war," he said.

In addition, reports emerged last week that Saudi private citizens were funnelling money to Sunni militias in Iraq through charities or pilgrims.

The warning to Mr Cheney was the most high-level indication of Saudi concerns. In October the Saudi ambassador to Washington, Prince Turki al-Faisal, said that "since America came into Iraq uninvited, it should not leave Iraq uninvited".

The same message was delivered last month by Nawaf Obaid, a security adviser to the Saudi embassy, in the Washington Post. "One of the first consequences will be massive Saudi intervention to stop Iranian-backed Shi'ite militias from butchering Iraqi Sunnis," Mr Obaid wrote. "Options now include providing Sunni military leaders [primarily ex-Baathist members of the former Iraqi officer corps, who make up the backbone of the insurgency] with the same types of assistance - funding, arms and logistical support - that Iran has been giving to Shi'ite armed groups for years."

Prince Turki sacked Mr Obaid a week later, and the official Saudi press agency said there was no truth to his remarks. Days later Prince Turki told his staff that he had resigned. There has been no official confirmation from Saudi authorities.