htp://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/858CBBCD-B192-4AA9-A7FB-B7DF13CE9D4B.htm

Ala Bashir is a prominent Iraqi surgeon, painter and sculptor.

"Nowadays, newspapers and books speak about bloodshed in Iraq as if it's an unusual thing for the country, whereas the truth is very different.

"Iraq has always been a volatile country, and warring parties have always been forced to use the ultimate form of violence to achieve their goals," Dr Bashir said.

It is difficult to say how aware Bush is of the reality in Iraq, but some part of him must be cursing the day he decided to invade it.

The sentence is hardly complete without the phrase "(well before September 11th)".

Is some part of those Democratic Senators who voted to

support the war "cursing the day" they voted to authorize

Bush/Blair to invade Iraq? Is some part of the rest of the

Party, or the Base, cursing those Democrats? In 2008 do the

Democrats plan to run someone who was Right on Iraq in the

first place?

Thank-you as always for your illuminating insights on the situation in Iraq. I am a devoted reader of your columns and your blog.

I want to take a small issue with your use of casualty rates in order to illustrate the horrors of the past week.

You note that "A proportional number of deaths in the U.S. would be 15,000 -- more than the number of U.S. troops who died in D-Day and Okinawa, the Pacific theater's bloodiest battle, combined". American military deaths at just Okinawa were indeed around 12,000. But at the time, in 1944, the United States had a population of around 130 million, less than half of it's current population. In addition, at Okinawa there were some 150,000 civilians and 100,000 Japanese soldiers killed, making the entire battle one of the worst in world memory. In fact, more people died at Okinawa than at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, combined. To conflate any of that with this week's tragedy is hugely overstating the magnitude of the catastrophe, although a catastrophe it certainly is.

A more apt analogy might be to the first battle in the American Civil War. Around 1300 soldiers were killed at Bull Run, and the American population in 1861 (31 million) was nearly equal to that of Iraq now (26 million). Let us hope that Iraq will not descend into the kind of darkness that America did then, where later on in the war battles were killing tens of thousands per day. What we and certainly the Iraqis need now is visionary leadership. But obviously, Bush is no Lincoln.

- Daryl Furr

How could Americans JUST NOW be "grasping the reality" about Iraq?

It says a lot about the state of our morals and intelligence in the US that Americans, after 3 long years, are, according to Juan Cole, just now waking up to the reality of what Bush has wrought upon the Iraqi people. I wonder how long it would take us to "wake up to the reality" if it were our cities being bombed, our children being killed, our water systems being destroyed? I'm thinking much less than 3 years. And so now Iraq is at the edge of civil war. And Northern Iraq has declared itself 'Kurdistan,' a move which may well end up meaning that Turkey enters the fray sometime in the next year. Bravo Bush. As US money hemmorraghes into the Middle East, destroying lives and livelihoods as it flows, the US infrastructure rots on, and Americans remain so ignorant that they can't find Iraq on the map, and are "just now waking up to the reality" of what this war means.

Julia Cosentino Konmaz

As is usual, Juan Cole's insights are illuminating, but rife with exaggeration. To wit:

More momentously, Khamenei's rival, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani of Najaf in Iraq, also appears to be losing confidence in the Iraq situation. Sistani's restraint until now has been the key factor in keeping sectarian strife from boiling out of control. But he responded to the destruction of the golden-domed Askariyah Shrine at Samarra by calling for peaceful demonstrations -- a reckless move from a man known as cautious and moderate.

I don't believe I've come across anyone other than Juan Cole who somehow views Sistani's reaction as "reckless." On the contrary, Sistani's reaction was one of utter restraint.

It's not as though Sistani hasn't called for peaceful demonstrations before. Iraq's January 2005 Elections, for instance, occurred only after Sistani turned out 100,000 protesters. He may not be prone to calls of protest, but when important events warrant them, Sistani doesn't hesitate to call them.

It was convenient to Juan Cole's opinion piece to assume that Sistani has lost faith in the current political process, but I don't see any evidence of that -- certainly not in Sistani's call for demonstrations.

The queastions that are being asked here are the one I have been asking, and asking myself, forever. How can the American public realize ONLY NOW what has been happening in Irak for three years, in Afghanistan, in America and elsewhere for five years - how is it possible that a normal member of the public as myself was able to see what was going to happen BEFORE the invasion (yeah, I know, liberation) of Irak took place, and so many American politicians, whose job it should be, didn't see it. HOW?

Unfortunately, most Americans still don't grasp the collosal mess the Bush Administration has wrought on Iraq, and our own country. Let's take a look at what Mr.Bush did to our country in only 5 years. Our deficit is such that we may never be able to recover, our schools are getting worse, our hospitals are closing and the ones that remain open have sub-standard emergency care, our roads and bridges are crumbling, the poor are getting poorer, the ultra-rich are becoming hyper-rich, the middleclass is becoming a fable like the unicorn, FEMA has been systematically dismantled (Katrina ring a bell?) we have lost our civil rights, they are listening to our phone calls, they are reading our emails, they can declare an American citizen an enemy combatant and no one will ever hear from you again (no lawyer, secret charges, and no day in court)higher education costs have spiraled out of control leaving the average American in a perpetual state of ignorance, women's rights have moved backward, we are the most divided as a country since the Civil War, our standing in the world has plumeted, we torture in the name of so-called democracy, our elections are rigged, and we go to war so that companies like Haliburten can make billions of dollars while our not so rich young men and women from small poor towns across America can get their bodies blown apart in Iraq all in the name of patriotic glory...the only thing the Bush Administration has accomplished is the Do Not Call List for phone solicitors. I don't know about you, but I'd trade that Do Not Call List to have the America I grew up in back again.