8-30-06, 9:10 am

The Iraqi cities of Baghdad, Kirkuk, Baqhuba, and Basra were rocked this past week by car bombs, grenade attacks, and gun battles fueled by sectarian violence. At least nine US military personnel were killed and wounded along with more than 100 Iraqis killed and many dozens wounded in the violence.

This wave of violence comes on the heels of US military claims that it had succeeded in tightening security in Baghdad and surrounding areas. Widespread fears of sectarian violence breaking out into open civil war have so far not been alleviated.

According to media reports, a car bomb was driven into a security checkpoint near the Interior Ministry building on Monday. Aside from 8 Iraqi policemen killed, 17 others were wounded and 6 passersby were also killed. In another part of the city, a roadside bomb killed one person and several others were wounded.

Over the weekend, a suicide bomber killed eight people and wounded 18 others on a bus near the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad. In a separate incident, nine US service members were killed in Baghdad by a roadside bomb and by gunfire.

In the town of Khalis, near Baqubah, just northeast of Baghdad, gunmen invaded the home of a local official, shot a resident there, and tried to kidnap another. When local people came to the aid of the people in the house, the gunmen opened fire on them, killing 12 and wounding two dozen more.

Sectarian attacks in nearby Baqubah killed five more people.

In the northern city of Kirkuk, a series of bombings killed 10 people Sunday near the house of a police official and outside a meeting hall of Sufis, a mystical Muslim religious sect. Attacks also targeted offices of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, the party of Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, on the same day. A car bomb at one of the offices killed one security guard, and police exchanged fire with gunmen at another party office.

A bomb strapped to a motorcycle was detonated in the southern port city of Basra at a market, killing four people and wounding 15.

In the city of Diwaniyah, gun battles between Iraqi forces and militiamen of the Mahdi Army loyal to religious leader Muqtada al-Sadr left at least 34 people dead and about 70 wounded.

2,632 US troops have been killed since the war began in 2003 with 19,323 wounded, and an estimated tens of thousands more have suffered mental trauma as a result of combat in Iraq.

Conservative estimates of the number of Iraqis killed as a result of the war suggest that upwards of 45,613 have died since the invasion began in 2003.

The Bush administration and its few remaining supporters insist that leaving Iraq will send it into civil war. With thousands of Iraqis killed in nearly daily attacks over the last 6 months in many parts of Iraq, mainly motivated by sectarian differences, many observers believe civil war has already either begun or is very near.

Clearly, the presence of the US military and other foreign armies, along with a tightly controlled and ill-equipped Iraqi security force, have failed to prevent that scenario. What could withdrawal do other than to remove the major source of tension in the country: the occupation? The violence could not get much worse. Occupation forces have also not been able to control rise of criminal gangs. And the return of control to the coalition Iraqi government of control of its security forces and its reconstruction efforts would eliminate motives for much of the violence.

The administration's stubborn insistence on staying in Iraq as long as Bush is president will only get more US troops wounded and killed as that country lapses into an unnecessary civil war. Supporting the troops means bringing them home now more than ever.



--Joel Wendland is managing editor of Political Affairs and can be reached at