Ignore Bush, Rumsfeld, and Rice. US troops know a civil war when they see it.

"While American politicians and generals in Washington debate the possibility of civil war in Iraq, many U.S. officers and enlisted men who patrol Baghdad say it has already begun.

"Army troops in and around the capital interviewed in the last week cite a long list of evidence that the center of the nation is coming undone: Villages have been abandoned by Sunni and Shiite Muslims; Sunni insurgents have killed thousands of Shiites in car bombings and assassinations; Shiite militia death squads have tortured and killed hundreds, if not thousands, of Sunnis; and when night falls, neighborhoods become open battlegrounds."

After detailing the evidence -- as described by U.S. troops -- Lasseter observed, "The recent assertion by U.S. soldiers here that Iraq is in a civil war is a stunning indication that American efforts to bring peace and democracy to Iraq are failing, more than three years after the toppling of dictator Saddam Hussein's regime. "

Some Iraqi troops, too, share that assessment. "This is a civil war," a senior adviser to the commander of the Iraqi Army's 6th Division, which oversees much of Baghdad, told Lasseter.

"There's no plan - we are constantly reacting," said a senior American military official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "I have absolutely no idea what we're going to do."

Staff Sgt. Wesley Ramon had a similar assessment. "It's to the point of being irreconcilable; you know, we've found a lot of bodies, entire villages have been cleared out, we get reports of entire markets being gunned down - and if that's not a marker of a civil war, I don't know what is," said Ramon, of San Antonio, Texas.

This is what the Republican plan has wrought. As long as Bush and his cronies are in power this problem will only get worse.

Our only hope of making any changes in what is going on in Iraq today is to get these idiots out of the way and get somebody in a leadership position who acknowledges the realities of what is happening and then can assess a plan for dealing with it.

Who in the Republican side of things has shown the ability to do that? McCain? He supports Bush, and continues to suggest that we are doing better. The Republicnas have nobody!

I don't know if the Democrats will have a solution ready or not, but at least they see that there is a problem! So lets get the Congress and the Senate in the hands of the reality based community as soon as possible!