Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice made a "surprise" visit to Iraq this week. As
Juan Cole points out, it had to be a "surprise" visit because otherwise she would be killed. President Bush, who has been vehemently denying his administration has been lying about the progress in Iraq, sent Rice to the region, probably hoping that photo ops with the local government in the Green Zone would knock the chaos out of the news for a day.
Big mistake.
In sending Rice to the hell borne out of his administration's incompetence, President Bush provided the most complete rebuttal to his arguments that Iraq is making steady progress towards peace. Reality, you see, has a pesky way of making itself known when the cameras are rolling:
(Update: Note that in this State Dept. photo, Rice had to wear a bullet-proof vest from the moment she disembarked her plane.)
[S]igns of progress were not much in evidence in the first hours of her visit.
It began inauspiciously when the military transport plane that brought her to Baghdad was forced to circle the city for about 40 minutes because of what a State Department spokesman later said was either mortar fire or rockets at the airport.
On Thursday evening, during her meeting with President Jalal Talabani, the lights went out, forcing Rice to continue the discussion in the dark. It was a reminder of the city's erratic -- and sometimes nonexistent -- electrical service.
She arrived in the midst of an especially bloody few days for American troops. At least 21 U.S. soldiers have been killed in Iraq since Saturday, most in Baghdad. Two car bombings in the city Thursday left at least four Iraqi civilians dead.
You don't need an NIE to tell you that Iraq is a failed state. The evidence simply can't be concealed any longer.
More below...
As ABC News reporter
Terry McCarthy detailed yesterday, it's no secret that the situation in Iraq is rapidly deteriorating:
Oct. 5, 2006 -- How bad is bad? After six weeks away from Iraq and returning to Baghdad, I find the city appears much worse than when I left.
Last week, according to a U.S. military spokesman, Baghdad experienced more attacks from car bombs and improvised explosive devices than at any other time this year. In the last five days, 14 U.S. soldiers have died in Baghdad, numbers that haven't been seen in the city since the 2003 invasion.
ABC's local Iraqi staff tell us there are an increasing number of neighborhoods they no longer dare to visit.
Meanwhile, Senator John Warner (R-VA) refuses to embrace the GOP spin on Iraq:
The Republican chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee yesterday offered a stark assessment of the situation in Iraq after a trip there this week, saying that parts of the country have taken "steps backwards" and that the United States is at risk of losing the campaign to control an increasingly violent Baghdad.
Sen. John W. Warner (Va.) told reporters on Capitol Hill that the Iraqi government is having trouble making strides and is incapable of providing even basic human necessities to people in certain areas of the country. Though Warner praised U.S. efforts to keep Iraq under control, he was far less optimistic about the situation there than he had been over the past three years.
Echoing the sentiments of several leading Democrats on his committee, Warner said he believes the United States may have to reevaluate its approach in Iraq if the situation does not improve dramatically over the next several months.
"I assure you, in two or three months, if this thing hasn't come to fruition and if this level of violence is not under control and this government able to function, I think it's a responsibility of our government internally to determine: Is there a change of course that we should take?" Warner said. "And I wouldn't take off the table any option at this time."
"Is there a change of course that we should take?" That is not the question Republicans want to be debating just weeks away from an election that's a referendum on the President's "stay the course" strategy.