U.S.: Iraq Violence Widening

Comprehensive data compiled by a private security company with access to military intelligence reports and its own network of Iraqi informants reveals that "Over the past 30 days, more than 2,300 attacks by insurgents have been directed against civilians and military targets in Iraq, in a pattern that sprawls over nearly every major population center outside the Kurdish north." The Washington Post reports, "a growing number of career professionals within national security agencies believe that the situation in Iraq is much worse...than is being expressed in public by top Bush administration officials." President Bush says we are making "steady progress" in Iraq. Here's what some of America's well-informed intelligence officers and army officials have to say in today's papers : "Things are definitely not improving," says a government official who reads the intelligence analyses on Iraq.[more ] and  [more ]

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• Former Sectretary of State Madeleine Albright Asks Bush: How has the Iraq war made us safer, if it transformed Iraq from a place whose military was surrounded and contained, into what you have repeatedly called the "central front" in the war on terror? [more ]