Stone Cupid Real

    Interview With Investigative Journalist Seymour Hersh: "The President Has Accepted Ethnic Cleansing"
    By Charles Hawley and David Gordon Smith
    Der Spiegel

    Friday 28 September 2007

Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh has consistently led the way in telling the story of what's really going on in Iraq and Iran. SPIEGEL ONLINE spoke to him about America's Hitler, Bush's Vietnam, and how the US press failed the First Amendment.

    SPIEGEL ONLINE: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was just in New York for the United Nations General Assembly. Once again, he said that he is only interested in civilian nuclear power instead of atomic weapons. How much does the West really know about the nuclear program in Iran?

    Seymour Hersh: A lot. And it's been underestimated how much the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) knows. If you follow what (IAEA head Mohamed) ElBaradei and the various reports have been saying, the Iranians have claimed to be enriching uranium to higher than a 4 percent purity, which is the amount you need to run a peaceful nuclear reactor. But the IAEA's best guess is that they are at 3.67 percent or something. The Iranians are not even doing what they claim to be doing. The IAEA has been saying all along that they've been making progress but basically, Iran is nowhere. Of course the US and Israel are going to say you have to look at the worst case scenario, but there isn't enough evidence to justify a bombing raid.

    SPIEGEL ONLINE: Is this just another case of exaggerating the danger in preparation for an invasion like we saw in 2002 and 2003 prior to the Iraq War?

    Hersh: We have this wonderful capacity in America to Hitlerize people. We had Hitler, and since Hitler we've had about 20 of them. Khrushchev and Mao and of course Stalin, and for a little while Gadhafi was our Hitler. And now we have this guy Ahmadinejad. The reality is, he's not nearly as powerful inside the country as we like to think he is. The Revolutionary Guards have direct control over the missile program and if there is a weapons program, they would be the ones running it. Not Ahmadinejad.

    SPIEGEL ONLINE: Where does this feeling of urgency that the US has with Iran come from?

    Hersh: Pressure from the White House. That's just their game.

    SPIEGEL ONLINE: What interest does the White House have in moving us to the brink with Tehran?

    Hersh: You have to ask yourself what interest we had 40 years ago for going to war in Vietnam. You'd think that in this country with so many smart people, that we can't possibly do the same dumb thing again. I have this theory in life that there is no learning. There is no learning curve. Everything is tabula rasa. Everybody has to discover things for themselves.

    SPIEGEL ONLINE: Even after Iraq? Aren't there strategic reasons for getting so deeply involved in the Middle East?

    Hersh: Oh no. We're going to build democracy. The real thing in the mind of this president is he wants to reshape the Middle East and make it a model. He absolutely believes it. I always thought Henry Kissinger was a disaster because he lies like most people breathe and you can't have that in public life. But if it were Kissinger this time around, I'd actually be relieved because I'd know that the madness would be tied to some oil deal. But in this case, what you see is what you get. This guy believes he's doing God's work.

    SPIEGEL ONLINE: So what are the options in Iraq?

    Hersh: There are two very clear options: Option A) Get everybody out by midnight tonight. Option B) Get everybody out by midnight tomorrow. The fuel that keeps the war going is us.

    SPIEGEL ONLINE: A lot of people have been saying that the US presence there is a big part of the problem. Is anyone in the White House listening?

    Hersh: No. The president is still talking about the "Surge" (eds. The "Surge" refers to President Bush's commitment of 20,000 additional troops to Iraq in the spring of 2007 in an attempt to improve security in the country.) as if it's going to unite the country. But the Surge was a con game of putting additional troops in there. We've basically Balkanized the place, building walls and walling off Sunnis from Shiites. And in Anbar Province, where there has been success, all of the Shiites are gone. They've simply split.

    SPIEGEL ONLINE: Is that why there has been a drop in violence there?

    Hersh: I think that's a much better reason than the fact that there are a couple more soldiers on the ground.

    SPIEGEL ONLINE: So what are the lessons of the Surge?

    Hersh: The Surge means basically that, in some way, the president has accepted ethnic cleansing, whether he's talking about it or not. When he first announced the Surge in January, he described it as a way to bring the parties together. He's not saying that any more. I think he now understands that ethnic cleansing is what is going to happen. You're going to have a Kurdistan. You're going to have a Sunni area that we're going to have to support forever. And you're going to have the Shiites in the South.

    SPIEGEL ONLINE: So the US is over four years into a war that is likely going to end in a disaster. How valid are the comparisons with Vietnam?

    Hersh: The validity is that the US is fighting a guerrilla war and doesn't know the culture. But the difference is that at a certain point, because of Congressional and public opposition, the Vietnam War was no longer tenable. But these guys now don't care. They see it but they don't care...

Read more... 

Runaway (Spending) Train
    The New York Times

    Friday 28 September 2007

    If, as he says, President Bush is going to start withdrawing troops from Iraq, why on earth does he need vastly more money from Congress to wage war? The staggering, ever escalating numbers tell the real story: As long as it's up to Mr. Bush, the American presence in Iraq will be endless and ever more costly, diverting resources from other national priorities that are being ignored or shortchanged.

    The administration showed its cards on Wednesday when it asked Congress for an additional $42.3 billion in "emergency" funding for Iraq and Afghanistan. This comes on top of the original 2008 spending request, which was made before Mr. Bush announced his so-called "new strategy" of partial withdrawal. It would bring the 2008 war bill to nearly $190 billion, the largest single-year total for the wars and an increase of 15 percent from 2007.

    And here are a few more facts to put the voracious war machine in context: By year's end, the cost for both conflicts since Sept. 11, 2001, is projected to reach more than $800 billion. Iraq alone has cost the United States more in inflation-adjusted dollars than the Gulf War and the Korean War and will probably surpass the Vietnam War by the end of next year, according to the nonpartisan Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.

    For officials and politicians used to dealing with eye-popping numbers, the additional $42.3 billion may just register as a few more zeros on the bottom line of a staggeringly big bill. But it's more than enough to cover the five-year $35 billion proposal for children's health-care coverage that Mr. Bush has threatened to veto.

    This for a war that former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld once said would cost under $50 billion while his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, predicted Iraqi oil revenues would largely pay for Iraq's reconstruction.

    Friday 28 September 2007

    Sometimes it seems that the only way to make sense of the Bush administration is to imagine that it's a vast experiment concocted by mad political scientists who want to see what happens if a nation systematically ignores everything we've learned over the past few centuries about how to make a modern government work.

    Thus, the administration has abandoned the principle of a professional, nonpolitical civil service, stuffing agencies from FEMA to the Justice Department with unqualified cronies. Tax farming - giving individuals the right to collect taxes, in return for a share of the take - went out with the French Revolution; now the tax farmers are back.

    And so are mercenaries, whom Machiavelli described as "useless and dangerous" more than four centuries ago.

    As far as I can tell, America has never fought a war in which mercenaries made up a large part of the armed force. But in Iraq, they are so central to the effort that, as Peter W. Singer of the Brookings Institution points out in a new report, "the private military industry has suffered more losses in Iraq than the rest of the coalition of allied nations combined."

    And, yes, the so-called private security contractors are mercenaries. They're heavily armed. They carry out military missions, but they're private employees who don't answer to military discipline. On the other hand, they don't seem to be accountable to Iraqi or U.S. law, either. And they behave accordingly.

    We may never know what really happened in a crowded Baghdad square two weeks ago. Employees of Blackwater USA claim that they were attacked by gunmen. Iraqi police and witnesses say that the contractors began firing randomly at a car that didn't get out of their way.

    What we do know is that more than 20 civilians were killed, including the couple and child in the car. And the Iraqi version of events is entirely consistent with many other documented incidents involving security contractors.

    For example, Mr. Singer reminds us that in 2005 "armed contractors from the Zapata firm were detained by U.S. forces, who claimed they saw the private soldiers indiscriminately firing not only at Iraqi civilians, but also U.S. Marines." The contractors were not charged. In 2006, employees of Aegis, another security firm, posted a "trophy video" on the Internet that showed them shooting civilians, and employees of Triple Canopy, yet another contractor, were fired after alleging that a supervisor engaged in "joy-ride shooting" of Iraqi civilians.

    Yet even among the contractors, Blackwater has the worst reputation. On Christmas Eve 2006, a drunken Blackwater employee reportedly shot and killed a guard of the Iraqi vice president. (The employee was flown out of the country, and has not been charged.) In May 2007, Blackwater employees reportedly shot an employee of Iraq's Interior Ministry, leading to an armed standoff between the firm and Iraqi police.

    Iraqis aren't the only victims of this behavior. Of the nearly 4,000 American service members who have died in Iraq, scores if not hundreds would surely still be alive if it weren't for the hatred such incidents engender.

    Which raises the question, why are Blackwater and other mercenary outfits still playing such a big role in Iraq?

 Read more...

...He's the sweetest dog I know. Please adopt your animals and love them (but be responsible with and for them). "I'm trying to be the person my dog thinks I am."

Here's a picture of Rothko just after we adopted him at 8-9 weeks old.

 And another pic of him with our friend Vonder recently.

And here's a nice link to pet psychic Laura Stinchfield's interview with another smart, sweet pit bull named Daisy Mae. 

[I thought that soldiers fighting to "uphold democracy" were by definition fighting for freedom to worship (or not) as they chose. Guess not. --- Julie]

     By Jason Leopold
    t r u t h o u t | Report

    Tuesday 18 September 2007

    A military watchdog organization filed a lawsuit in federal court Tuesday against the Pentagon, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, and a US Army major, on behalf of an Army soldier stationed in Iraq. The suit charges the Pentagon with widespread constitutional violations by allegedly trying to force the soldier to embrace evangelical Christianity and then retaliating against him when he refused.

    The complaint, filed in US District Court in Kansas City, by the nonprofit Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF), on behalf of Jeremy Hall, an Army specialist currently on active duty in Speicher, Iraq, alleges that Hall's First Amendment rights were violated beginning last Thanksgiving when, because of his atheist beliefs, he declined to participate in a Christian prayer ceremony commemorating the holiday.

    "Immediately after plaintiff made it known he would decline to join hands and pray, he was confronted, in the presence of other military personnel, by the senior ranking ... staff sergeant who asked plaintiff why he did not want to pray, whereupon plaintiff explained because he is an atheist," says the lawsuit, a copy of which was provided to Truthout. "The staff sergeant asked plaintiff what an atheist is and plaintiff responded it meant that he (plaintiff) did not believe in God. This response caused the staff sergeant to tell plaintiff that he would have to sit elsewhere for the Thanksgiving dinner. Nonetheless, plaintiff sat at the table in silence and finished his meal."

    Moreover, the complaint alleges that on August 7, when Hall received permission by an Army chaplain to organize a meeting of other soldiers who shared his atheist beliefs, his supervisor, Army Major Paul Welborne, broke up the gathering and threatened to retaliate against the soldier by charging him with violating the Uniform Code of Military Justice. The complaint also alleges that Welborne vowed to block Hall's reenlistment in the Army if the atheist group continued to meet - a violation of Hall's First Amendment rights under the Constitution. Welborne is named as a defendant in the lawsuit.

    "During the course of the meeting, defendant Welborne confronted the attendees, disrupted the meeting and interfered with plaintiff Hall's and the other attendees' rights to discuss topics of their interests," the lawsuit alleges.

    The complaint charges that Hall, who is based at Fort Riley, Kansas, has been forced to "submit to a religious test as a qualification to his post as a soldier in the United States Army," a violation of Article VI, Clause 3 of the Constitution.

    The Military Religious Freedom Foundation said Defense Secretary Robert Gates is named as a defendant in the lawsuit because he has allowed the military to engage in "a pattern and practice of constitutionally impermissible promotions of religious beliefs within the Department of Defense and the United States military."

    The lawsuit seeks an injunction against Welborne from further engaging in behavior "that has the effect of establishing compulsory religious practices" and asks that Gates prevent Welborne from interfering with Hall's free speech rights.

    Mikey Weinstein, founder of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, an organization that seeks to enforce the law mandating the separation between church and state in the US military, said the lawsuit would be the first of many his group intends to file against the Pentagon.

    "This landmark federal litigation is just the first of a galaxy of new lawsuits that will be expeditiously filed against the Pentagon in a concentrated effort to preserve the precious religious liberties guaranteed by our beautiful United States Constitution," Weinstein said Monday. "Today, we are boldly stabbing back against an unconstitutional heart of darkness, a contagion of fundamentalist religious supremacy and triumphalism noxiously dominating the command and control of the technologically most lethal organization ever created by humankind: our honorable and noble United States armed forces."

    A Pentagon spokesman said he could not comment on the lawsuit because he has not yet seen it.

    Weinstein, a former White House attorney under Ronald Reagan, general counsel H. Ross Perot and an Air Force Judge Advocate (JAG), has been waging a one-man war against the Department of Defense for its blatant disregard of the Constitution. He published a book on his fight: "With God on Our Side: One Man's War Against an Evangelical Coup in America's Military." Weinstein is also an Air Force veteran and a graduate of the Air Force Academy. Three generations of his family have attended US military academies.

    Since he launched his watchdog organization nearly two years ago months ago, Weinstein said he has been contacted by more than 5,000 active duty and retired soldiers, many of whom served or serve in Iraq, who told Weinstein that they were pressured by their commanding officers to convert to Christianity.

    The lawsuit also includes examples of other alleged constitutional abuses by Pentagon officials.

    Last month, the Pentagon's Inspector General responded to a complaint filed last year by the Military Religious Freedom Foundation alleging that Defense Department officials violated military regulations by appearing in a video promoting a fundamental Christian organization.

    The Inspector General agreed and issued a 47-page report that was highly critical of senior Army and Air Force personnel for participating in the video while in uniform and on active duty....Read on 

    Will the Democrats Betray Us?
    By Frank Rich
    The New York Times

    Sunday 16 September 2007

    "Sir, I don't know, actually": The fact that America's surrogate commander in chief, David Petraeus, could not say whether the war in Iraq is making America safer was all you needed to take away from last week's festivities in Washington. Everything else was a verbal quagmire, as administration spin and senatorial preening fought to a numbing standoff.

    Not that many Americans were watching. The country knew going in that the White House would win its latest campaign to stay its course of indefinitely shoveling our troops and treasure into the bottomless pit of Iraq. The only troops coming home alive or with their limbs intact in President Bush's troop "reduction" are those who were scheduled to be withdrawn by April anyway. Otherwise the president would have had to extend combat tours yet again, mobilize more reserves or bring back the draft.

    On the sixth anniversary of the day that did not change everything, General Petraeus couldn't say we are safer because he knows we are not. Last Sunday, Michael Scheuer, the former chief of the C.I.A.'s Osama bin Laden unit, explained why. He wrote in The Daily News that Al Qaeda, under the de facto protection of Pervez Musharraf, is "on balance" more threatening today that it was on 9/11. And as goes Pakistan, so goes Afghanistan. On Tuesday, just as the Senate hearings began, Lisa Myers of NBC News reported on a Taliban camp near Kabul in an area nominally controlled by the Afghan government we installed. It is training bomb makers to attack America.

    Little of this registered in or beyond the Beltway. New bin Laden tapes and the latest 9/11 memorial rites notwithstanding, we're back in a 9/10 mind-set. Bin Laden, said Frances Townsend, the top White House homeland security official, "is virtually impotent." Karen Hughes, the Bush crony in charge of America's P.R. in the jihadists' world, recently held a press conference anointing Cal Ripken Jr. our international "special sports envoy." We are once more sleepwalking through history, fiddling while the Qaeda not in Iraq prepares to burn.

    This is why the parallels between Vietnam and Iraq, including those more accurate than Mr. Bush's recent false analogies, can take us only so far. Our situation is graver than it was during Vietnam.

    Certainly there were some eerie symmetries between General Petraeus's sales pitch last week and its often-noted historical antecedent: Gen. William Westmoreland's similar mission for L.B.J. before Congress on April 28, 1967. Westmoreland, too, refused to acknowledge that our troops were caught in a civil war. He spoke as well of the "repeated successes" of the American-trained South Vietnamese military and ticked off its growing number of combat-ready battalions. "The strategy we're following at this time is the proper one," the general assured America, and "is producing results."

    Those fabulous results delayed our final departure from Vietnam for another eight years - just short of the nine to 10 years General Petraeus has said may be needed for a counterinsurgency in Iraq. But there's a crucial difference between the Westmoreland show of 1967 and the 2007 revival by General Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker. Westmoreland played to a full and largely enthusiastic house. Most Americans still supported the war in Vietnam and trusted him; so did all but a few members of Congress, regardless of party. All three networks pre-empted their midday programming for Westmoreland's Congressional appearance.

    Our Iraq commander, by contrast, appeared before a divided and stalemated Congress just as an ABC News-Washington Post poll found that most Americans believed he would overhype progress in Iraq. No network interrupted a soap opera for his testimony. On cable the hearings fought for coverage with Britney Spears's latest self-immolation and the fate of Madeleine McCann, our latest JonBenet Ramsey stand-in.

    General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker could grab an hour of prime television time only by slinking into the safe foxhole of Fox News, where Brit Hume chaperoned them on a gloomy, bunkerlike set before an audience of merely 1.5 million true believers. Their "Briefing for America," as Fox titled it, was all too fittingly interrupted early on for a commercial promising pharmaceutical relief from erectile dysfunction.

    Even if military "victory" were achievable in Iraq, America could not win a war abandoned by its own citizens. The evaporation of that support was ratified by voters last November. For that, they were rewarded with the "surge." Now their mood has turned darker. Americans have not merely abandoned the war; they don't want to hear anything that might remind them of it, or of war in general. Katie Couric's much-promoted weeklong visit to the front produced ratings matching the CBS newscast's all-time low. Angelina Jolie's movie about Daniel Pearl sank without a trace. Even Clint Eastwood's wildly acclaimed movies about World War II went begging. Over its latest season, "24" lost a third of its viewers, just as Mr. Bush did between January's prime-time address and last week's.

    You can't blame the public for changing the channel. People realize that the president's real "plan for victory" is to let his successor clean up the mess. They don't want to see American troops dying for that cause, but what can be done? Americans voted the G.O.P. out of power in Congress; a clear majority consistently tell pollsters they want out of Iraq. And still every day is Groundhog Day. Our America, unlike Vietnam-era America, is more often resigned than angry. Though the latest New York Times-CBS News poll finds that only 5 percent trust the president to wrap up the war, the figure for the (barely) Democratic-controlled Congress, 21 percent, is an almost-as-resounding vote of no confidence.  Read More...

    UPDATE: 09.14.07:12:noon:pdt:

    We are receiving numerous reports from readers that our communications to them are affected. The reader comments posted below provide valuable additional information.

    The most frequent question we are hearing right now is: "What can I do?" NOTHING works better than public pressure. They can ignore us; they can't ignore you.

    AOL/Microsoft-Hotmail Preventing Delivery of Truthout Communications

    Thursday 13 September 2007

    Currently, AOL- and Microsoft-related email providers, including Hotmail, are preventing delivery of a range of Truthout communications to thousands of our subscribers. Such communications include Truthout's regular newsletters and notifications to our subscribers from individual workstations of Truthout administrators informing those subscribers that they are affected.

    For the most part, all other ISPs appear to be delivering Truthout communications normally.

    While AOL has been largely evasive and silent about their reasons for blocking communications, our server logs and complaints from subscribers illustrate a clear pattern of interference. Microsoft-Hotmail, while not being forthcoming about their actions to the subscribers involved, have stated to our administrators that they are in fact "throttling" and "blocking" our communications. Further, the Microsoft-Hotmail administrators inform us that they are blocking our communications to Truthout subscribers on their systems due to what they describe as our "reputation."

    We believe that you - not your Internet Service Provider - should decide what you will read. In an effort to restore service and send a clear message to the ISPs involved, we ask you to do the following:

    1.) Keep us informed. Let us know if your newsletters suddenly stop arriving. We have set up a special email address for those complaints.

    2.) It is critically important if it does become clear that you are still on our list, and we are sending to you, that you demand your rights. The only rights you have are the ones you exercise.

    We are deeply sorry to all of you affected. But we are confident that this problem can be addressed working hand-in-hand.

    Good luck,

    Marc Ash, Executive Director - t r u t h o u t

read more... 

Good Speech

The Red List of Threatened Species for 2007 names habitat loss, hunting and climate change among the causes.

The World Conservation Union (IUCN) has identified more than 16,000 species threatened with extinction, while prospects have brightened for only one.

The IUCN says there is a lack of political will to tackle the global erosion of nature.

IUCN is now embarking on a complete assessment of coral species, and expects to find that about 30% to 40% are threatened.

The most glaring example of a waterborne creature failed by conservation efforts is probably the baiji, the Yangtze river dolphin, which is categorised as Critically Endangered, Possibly Extinct....

Read it and weep 

    Monday 10 September 2007

    Barely a quarter of Iraqis say their security has improved in the past six months, a negative assessment of the surge in U.S. forces that reflects worsening public attitudes across a range of measures, even as authorities report some progress curtailing violence.

    Apart from a few scattered gains, a new national survey by ABC News, the BBC and the Japanese broadcaster NHK finds deepening dissatisfaction with conditions in Iraq, lower ratings for the national government and growing rejection of the U.S. role there.

    More Iraqis say security in their local area has gotten worse in the last six months than say it's gotten better, 31 percent to 24 percent, with the rest reporting no change. Far more, six in 10, say security in the country overall has worsened since the surge began, while just one in 10 sees improvement.

    More directly assessing the surge itself - a measure that necessarily includes views of the United States, which are highly negative - 65 to 70 percent of Iraqis say it's worsened rather than improved security, political stability and the pace of redevelopment alike.

    There are some improvements, but they're sparse and inconsistent. Thirty-eight percent in Anbar province, a focal point of the surge, now rate local security positively; none did so six months ago. In Baghdad fewer now describe themselves as feeling completely unsafe in their own neighborhoods - 58 percent, down from 84 percent. Yet other assessments of security in these locales have not improved, nor has the view nationally.

    Overall, 41 percent report security as their greatest personal problem, down seven points from 48 percent in March. But there's been essentially no change in the number who call it the nation's top problem (56 percent, with an additional 28 percent citing political or military issues). And there are other problems aplenty to sour the public's outlook - lack of jobs, poor power and fuel supply, poor medical services and many more.

    Big Picture

    The big picture remains bleak. Six in 10 Iraqis say their own lives are going badly, and even more, 78 percent, say things are going badly for the country overall - up 13 points from last winter. Expectations have crumbled; just 23 percent see improvement for Iraq in the year ahead, down from 40 percent last winter and 69 percent in November 2005.

    More than six in 10 now call the U.S.-led invasion of their country wrong, up from 52 percent last winter. Fifty-seven percent call violence against U.S. forces acceptable, up six points. And despite the uncertainties of what might follow, 47 percent now favor the immediate withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq - a 12-point rise.

    In a better result for the United States, fewer now blame U.S. or coalition forces directly for the violence occurring in Iraq - 19 percent, down from 31 percent six months ago; as many (21 percent) blame al Qaeda. (Eight percent blame George W. Bush personally.)

    If the United States is unpopular, others fare no better. Seventy-nine percent of Iraqis believe Iran is actively engaged in encouraging sectarian violence in Iraq, up eight points; majorities also suspect Saudi Arabia and Syria of fomenting violence. And the poll finds almost unanimous opposition to most activities of al Qaeda in Iraq; the sole exception is its attacks on U.S. and other coalition forces.

    Assessment

    This survey, based on face-to-face interviews of 2,212 randomly selected Iraqis across the country Aug. 17-24, follows a similar poll in Iraq by ABC, the BBC and other partners last Feb. 25-March 5. Together the two surveys bracket the surge, providing an independent assessment of changes in local conditions and attitudes.

    The Bush administration, with input from the U.S. military and its commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, reports this week on its own assessment of conditions in Iraq and the effect of the surge of approximately 30,000 additional U.S. troops there.

    Iraqis' own views can differ from military evaluations of the surge for good reason. Public attitudes are not based on a narrow accounting of more or fewer bombings and murders, but on the bigger picture - which for most in Iraq means continued violence, poor services, economic deprivation, inadequate reconstruction, political gridlock and other complaints. For instance, the reported drop in Baghdad from 896 violent deaths in July to 656 in August may simply have been insufficient to boost morale - particularly when violent deaths nationally were up by 20 percent, largely on the basis of bombings that killed an estimated 500 in two villages near the Syrian border on Aug. 14.

    Indeed just a quarter of Iraqis in this poll say they feel "very safe" in their own neighborhoods, unchanged from six months ago. (And none reports feeling "very safe" in Baghdad or Anbar province.) Reports of car bombings and suicide attacks are more widespread; 42 percent now say these have happened nearby, up 10 points.

    With both continued violence and no improvements in living conditions, frustration with Iraq's own government has grown as well. Despite billions spent, only 23 percent of Iraqis report effective reconstruction efforts in their local area. And about two-thirds disapprove of the work of both the current government overall (up by 12 points since winter), and of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki personally.

    The ABC/BBC/NHK poll, consisting of interviews that averaged nearly a half-hour in length, covered a wide range of attitudes and perceptions - personal experiences, views of the nation's prospects, ratings of security and the surge, politics and reconstruction, the performance of the United States, the level of local violence, ethnic cleansing and more.

    Personal Prospects

    In perhaps the most bottom-line measure of a country's well-being, 61 percent of Iraqis say their lives are going badly, unchanged from last winter and double what it was in late 2005. Among Sunni Arabs, the country's elites under Saddam Hussein, this soars to 88 percent, while among Kurds in the semi-autonomous north it's jumped from one-third to half in the last six months alone.

    The change over the long term is striking: In November 2005, 71 percent of Iraqis said their own lives were going well, compared with 39 percent in the last two polls.

    The future looks equally bleak: Only 29 percent of Iraqis expect their own lives to get better in the next year, down six points from last winter, including a 17-point drop among Kurds. And just a third of Iraqis now think their children will have a better life than they do, down nine points from six months ago. Hopes for the next generation have fallen by 11 points among Shiites - and by 24 points among increasingly negative Kurds.

    Iraq's Condition

    In terms of the country more broadly, in November 2005 a bare majority of Iraqis, 52 percent, said things were going badly. That rose to 65 percent last March, and 78 percent in this poll. The latest change includes a huge 40-point jump in negativity among Kurds, who enjoy far better living conditions in their northern provinces, but seem to have grown more alarmed about the situation to the south.

    Expectations that the country will be in better shape a year off, at just 23 percent, are a third of their November 2005 level. Positive expectations have fallen by 23 points among Shiites and by 34 points among Kurds; they remain rock-bottom among Sunni Arabs.

    Surge and Security

    Overall assessments of security show no improvement since last winter, and direct ratings of the surge are highly negative. In one measure, the number of Iraqis who rate their local security positively (43 percent) is no better than it was in March. In another, as noted, just 24 percent say local security has improved in the last six months, including 16 percent in Baghdad, and not one respondent in Anbar.

    Even fewer, 11 percent nationally, think security has improved in the country as a whole.

    The widespread nature of the violence is part of this. In Baghdad, 52 percent report car bombings or suicide attacks in their local area, the same as in March; but so do 39 percent in the country, up from 26 percent six months ago. Accounts of other forms of violence - such as snipers or crossfire, kidnappings for ransom and sectarian or factional fighting - also remain widespread, though their prevalence has not increased.

    Across the country overall, feelings of personal safety are no better than in March; just 26 percent of Iraqis feel "very safe" in their own neighborhood. And that's almost nonexistent across Iraq's major metro areas - Baghdad, Basra, Kirkuk and Mosul - where 98 percent of residents feel either "not very safe" (50 percent) or "not safe at all" (48 percent). Ratings of personal safety are better, though hardly good, in Iraq's smaller cities, villages and rural areas.

    Direct ratings of the surge itself are particularly negative. At best, only 18 percent of Iraqis say it has improved security in surge areas; at worst, just six percent say it's improved the pace of economic development. Indeed, as noted, the surge broadly is seen to have done more harm than good, with 65 to 70 percent saying it's worsened rather than improved security in surge areas, security in other areas, conditions for political dialogue, the ability of the Iraqi government to do its work, the pace of reconstruction and the pace of economic development.

    Every respondent in Baghdad, and also in Anbar (where George W. Bush paid a surprise visit to a sprawling U.S. base last week), says the surge has made security worse now than it was six months ago (anti-U.S. sentiment in these areas is very high, and likely a factor in these direct assessments). Views in the rest of the country are hardly positive: Outside Baghdad and Anbar, still just 26 percent say the surge has improved security.

    A broader question, not specifically linked to the surge, has an equally negative result: Just 18 percent of Iraqis say the presence of U.S. forces is making security better in their country overall, about the same as in March (21 percent). Instead 72 percent say the U.S. presence is making Iraq's security worse.

    While fewer in Baghdad now feel "not safe at all," it's hard to tell if that reflects better conditions, or more people accommodating themselves to existing conditions - the "new normal." Indeed, another result finds a 20-point drop in the number in Baghdad who rate local security positively.

    In Anbar, as noted, 38 percent now rate local security positively - none did in March. But there's been no improvement in the number who feel entirely unsafe (44 percent, compared with 38 percent in March).

    There's one further, disquieting result on security: Asked which group is in command of security in their village or neighborhood, 16 percent of Iraqis - up 11 points since March - reply that no one commands security in their area. Across Iraq's major metropolitan areas, that rises to 30 percent. In Baghdad alone, it's 36 percent. This may be less a direct assessment of local command than an expression of frustration with ongoing lawlessness.

    More Baghdad and Anbar

    There's particular interest in conditions in the focal points of the surge. In his visit to Anbar last week, Bush declared, "normal life is returning." Yet most Anbar residents seem not to see it that way.

    Forty-six percent in Anbar say lack of security is the biggest problem in their own lives, as many as say so elsewhere (it's 41 percent nationally). Seventy-four percent expect their children's lives to be worse than their own - nearly double the national figure. On the plus side, as noted, 38 percent rate local security positively, while none did in March; and half as many now call it "very bad," 32 percent. But still 62 percent in Anbar rate local security negatively overall. And reports of factional fighting there are up.

    Further, there have been increases in the most negative ratings ("very bad") on a variety of other issues in Anbar - including the availability of jobs (now rated as very bad by 62 percent, nearly double the March figure), local schools, the supply of clean water and the availability of household goods, among others. Sixty-three percent say their freedom of movement is very bad; 73 percent say that about the availability of fuel.

    Baghdad has its own continued problems. There have been 13- and 14-point drops in the number of Baghdad residents who report snipers or crossfire and kidnappings for ransom nearby; but still 43 and 44 percent, respectively, report these as occurring in their own areas. Sixty-eight percent call local security "very bad" - actually up from March. One reason may be that even apart from sectarian violence, sharply more give a "very bad" rating to their family's protection from crime - 66 percent, up from 44 percent in March. Again, as these are attitudinal measures, the drivers can be less crime protection - or simply less patience among a wearied and dispirited population.

    Reconstruction and Politics

    Nor, in the eyes of Iraqis, have reconstruction efforts or political leadership improved. As noted, only 23 percent of Iraqis report effective reconstruction efforts in their local area - down by 10 points in the past six months. It's down by 25 points among Kurds, another of many signs of increasingly negative views in that once-positive group.

    In terms of national politics, 65 percent disapprove of the way the Iraqi government has carried out its responsibilities, while just 35 percent approve. Disapproval of the Shiite-dominated government is up by 15 points, to 47 percent, among Shiites themselves; and up by 24 points among Kurds. It remains nearly unanimously negative among Sunni Arabs.

    Similarly, disapproval of Maliki's performance as prime minister is up by nine points, to 66 percent. His approval rating, 33 percent overall (very similar to George W. Bush's), has fallen by 10 points since winter, including by 13 points among Shiites and by 27 points among Kurds.

    Glimmers?

    In one slim glimmer of political improvement, half of Iraqis now say members of parliament are "willing to make necessary compromises" for peace; that's up by nine points from 41 percent last winter. But while most Shiites and Kurds say so (66 and 55 percent, respectively,) far fewer Sunni Arabs - 24 percent - agree. (The day before interviews began, Maliki and Iraq's Kurdish president announced a new alliance of moderate Shiites and Kurds; Sunni moderates, however, refused to join.)

    There are a few other whispers of possible gains. There's been a scant five-point drop in the number of Iraqis who report unnecessary violence against citizens by the Iraqi army occurring in their local area; notably that includes a 26-point decline among Sunni Arabs (but a 10-point rise among Shiites, albeit just to 17 percent). There have been five- and six-point gains in the level of confidence in the Iraqi army and police, to sizable majorities of 67 and 69 percent, respectively. (This confidence still is vastly lower, albeit somewhat improved, among Sunni Arabs.) And there's been a 12-point drop, to just 24 percent, in confidence in local militias, including a 19-point decline among Shiites.

    Another hopeful sign - and a remarkable one given its troubles - is the continued preference for Iraq to remain a single, unified state with a central government in Baghdad. Sixty-two percent favor that outcome, about the same as in March (albeit down from 79 percent in February 2004).

    Support for a single, centrally governed state has risen among Shiites, but fallen among Kurds, who've moved more toward favoring separation of the country into independent states. Separation now gets 49 percent support among Kurds, up 19 points; an additional 42 percent of Kurds favor the Swiss-like solution of a group of regional states with a federal government in Baghdad. A single state retains most support among Sunni Arabs.

    The War and US Forces

    Other assessments of the United States are overwhelmingly negative. As noted, nearly two-thirds of Iraqis now say it was wrong for the United States and its allies to have invaded Iraq - 63 percent, up from 52 percent six months ago and from 39 percent in the first Iraq poll by ABC, the BBC and NHK (and the German broadcaster ARD) in February 2004.

    Even among Shiites, empowered by the overthrow of Saddam, 51 percent now say the invasion was wrong, up sharply from 29 percent in March. (Further deterioration may be ahead; among Shiites who still support the invasion, the number who call it "absolutely" right has fallen from 34 percent in March to 14 percent now.) Only among the largely autonomous Kurds does a majority still support the invasion, and even their support, 71 percent, is down by 12 points.

    Seventy-nine percent of Iraqis oppose the presence of coalition forces in the country, essentially unchanged from last winter - including more than eight in 10 Shiites and nearly all Sunni Arabs. (Seven in 10 Kurds, by contrast, still support the presence of these forces.)

    Similarly, 80 percent of Iraqis disapprove of the way U.S. and other coalition forces have performed in Iraq; the only change has been an increase in negative ratings of the U.S. performance among Kurds. And 86 percent of Iraqis express little or no confidence in U.S. and U.K. forces, similar to last winter and again up among Kurds.

    Accusations of mistreatment continue: Forty-one percent of Iraqis in this poll (vs. 44 percent in March) report unnecessary violence against Iraqi citizens by U.S. or coalition forces. That peaks at 63 percent among Sunni Arabs, and 66 percent in Sunni-dominated Anbar.

    This disapproval rises to an endorsement of violence: Fifty-seven percent of Iraqis now call attacks on coalition forces "acceptable," up six points from last winter and more than three times its level (17 percent) in February 2004. Since March, acceptability of such attacks has risen by 15 points among Shiites (from 35 percent to 50 percent), while remaining near-unanimous among Sunnis (93 percent).

    Kurds, by contrast - protected by the United States when Saddam remained in power - continue almost unanimously to call these attacks unacceptable.

    Acceptability of attacks on U.S. forces also varies by locale, peaking at 100 percent in Anbar, 69 percent in Kirkuk city and 60 percent in Baghdad, compared with 38 percent in Basra and just three percent in the northern Kurdish provinces.

    Withdrawal

    Given such hostile views, 47 percent now say the United States and other coalition forces should leave Iraq immediately - a view that's risen equally among Sunni Arabs (72 percent now say the U.S. should leave immediately, up 17 points) and Shiites (44 percent, up 16 points). Kurds almost unanimously disagree; just eight percent favor an immediate withdrawal.

    The number of Iraqis favoring an immediate U.S. withdrawal has risen from 26 percent in November 2005 and 35 percent last winter; at 47 percent it's now a plurality for the first time (in the next most-popular option, 34 percent say U.S. forces should "remain until security is restored"). The fact that support for an immediate pullout of U.S. forces is not even higher, given the vast unpopularity of their presence, likely reflects the uncertainty of what might follow their departure.

    Indeed, apart from Kurds, support for immediate withdrawal is lowest, and has risen the least, in Baghdad, whose mixed Shiite-Sunni status puts it at particular risk. Desire for the United States to "leave now" is highest in Anbar, still deeply anti-American despite any accommodation its leaders have made with the U.S. military.

    The rise in support for U.S. withdrawal is linked to worsening views of the country's condition. People who think things are going badly for Iraq are far more likely to favor immediate withdrawal - 56 percent vs. 16 percent. Similarly, people who are pessimistic about the country's future also are far more likely to favor withdrawal - 53 percent, vs. 23 percent among optimists. With optimism down, support for withdrawal is up.

    Clearly there are concerns - varying sharply by population group - about the implications if the U.S. does withdraw without first restoring civil order. Nearly half of Iraqis, 46 percent, foresee Shiite-dominated Iran taking control of parts of Iraq. As many foresee parts of Iraq becoming bases of operation for international terrorists. Fewer, just over a third, think U.S. withdrawal would lead to full-scale civil war in Iraq, but with big differences: Two in 10 Shiites foresee full-scale civil war, but that rises to four in 10 Sunni Arabs and six in 10 Kurds. Paradoxically, Sunni Arabs - who dislike the United States most intensely and are most apt to favor its immediate withdrawal - also are most apt to foresee a takeover of parts of Iraq by Shiite-dominated Iran if the United States does pull out. This apparent lack of palatable alternatives underscores Sunni Arabs' quandary, leaving them, in particular, so discontented with conditions in Iraq today.

    Al Qaeda in Iraq

    While U.S. efforts are viewed resoundingly negatively, this does not translate into support for activities of al Qaeda in Iraq. Disturbingly, nearly half of Iraqis (predominantly Sunni Arabs) say it's acceptable for al Qaeda in Iraq to attack U.S. and coalition forces. But Iraqis - Sunni and Shiite alike - almost unanimously reject other activities of al Qaeda in Iraq - attacking Iraqi civilians (100 percent call this unacceptable), attempting to gain control of some areas (98 percent) and recruiting foreign fighters to come to Iraq (97 percent).

    Other Local Conditions

    Overall, of 13 local conditions tested in this poll, just one is reported to have improved - ratings of local schools, eight points better to 51 percent positive. All the rest are stable or slightly worse, and all are rated poorly, ranging from views of local security (rated negatively by 57 percent) to the supply of electricity and fuel (both 92 percent negative). All are devastatingly bad in Baghdad, where in most cases every single respondent rated local conditions negatively, as was the case in March.

    Segregation and Violence

    Segregation of Iraqis - both forced and voluntary - continues to occur. Across the country, one in six Iraqis - 17 percent - report the separation of Sunni and Shiite Arabs on sectarian lines, including 11 percent who describe this as mainly forced. In Baghdad, it soars: Forty-three percent report the separation of Sunnis and Shiites from mixed to segregated areas, and 27 percent say it's mainly forced - similar to the 31 percent who said so in March.

    Ethnic cleansing clearly is not isolated in Baghdad. The forced separation of Iraqis along sectarian lines is reported by 39 percent in Basra city, in the mainly Shiite south; and by 24 percent - one in four - across all major metropolitan areas.

    In a continued sign of hope, this separation is enormously unpopular: Ninety-eight percent, with agreement across ethnic and sectarian lines, oppose it.

    Related results underscore the difficulty of life in Iraq: Seventy-seven percent rate their freedom to live where they want without persecution negatively; 74 percent rate their freedom of safe movement negatively. Both are essentially unchanged from March.

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