Iraq is "Hell on Earth".

The images from Iraq are of hell on earth: On Sunday 12 Iraqi students traveling to Baqubah to take their final exams were dragged from a bus and killed because they practiced the wrong religion. The next day gunmen dressed in police uniforms kidnapped 56 people near the bus station in central Baghdad and hauled them off in pickup trucks.

This is an Iraqi nightmare, and America seems powerless to stop it. What would you think if you were the parent of one of those dead Iraqi children? You would want the United States, the nation that broke the fragile bonds that once held Iraq together, to act more effectively to control this violence. And you would want Iraq's so-called government of national unity to behave like one and stop the killers who are devouring the decent people of Iraq. And if neither the Americans nor the Iraqi government could protect your children, you would turn to the militias.

The American project in Iraq is unraveling. The president continues to talk about staying the course, and the White House still issues upbeat predictions of victory, but the course we are on is not working. The election of Iraq's first permanent government in December was the last good chance to put the pieces together. Nearly seven months after the elections, Iraqi politicians still can't agree on who should run the two key ministries, defense and interior.

A devastating summary of America's mistakes is contained in the latest installment of the Pentagon's quarterly report to Congress, "Measuring Stability and Security in Iraq." In every part of the country, fewer people than a year ago think the situation is better now than before the war. In the Baghdad area, pollsters found the percentage of optimists had fallen by half since March 2005, to about 30 percent.

And the violence grinds on: The rate of insurgent attacks is higher now than it was in 2004, with an average of more than 600 a week since the new government took over in February. U.S. military commanders talk of their success in splitting the Sunni insurgency, but the attack numbers don't reflect any lessening of its lethality. Meanwhile, the Shiites are fighting back with equal viciousness, and the Pentagon numbers show a sharp rise in sectarian killings over the past year.

I could not have said it better myself.