Iraqi death toll climbs to 6600 in two months

They have organised elections, and pushed through a democratically ratified constitution that has given birth to a national government with a true mandate. They have sent their own troops and trained the locals in their tens of thousands. They have sacrificed 2700 of their servicemen's lives and more than US$300 billion ($453 billion) of their taxpayers' money.

But nothing the Americans can do has stopped post-Saddam Iraq's long slide into chaos and despair.

United States President George W. Bush and his top aides still insist civil war has not broken out.

That, however, is a simple matter of semantics after the latest United Nations report stating almost 6600 people have died in sectarian violence in the past two months for which statistics are available: an "unprecedented" 3590 in July, followed by an only marginally less appalling 3009 last month. This represents 108 killings every day - or almost 40,000 a year.

Kofi Annan, the UN Secretary General, said this week: "If current patterns of alienation and violence persist much longer, there is a grave danger the Iraqi state will break down, possibly in the midst of full-scale civil war."

That was not what the Bush Administration intended when Nouri Maliki became Prime Minister four months ago. Instead of showing any signs of improving, security in Baghdad has only worsened and basic services, including electricity and sewage, have become intermittent.

And as even the most upbeat US commanders admit, if Baghdad cannot be saved, Iraq is lost.

That fate, according to a leaked report by the Marines' top intelligence officer in Iraq, has already befallen Anbar province, home of the so-called "Sunni Triangle", which is home to almost a third of the country.

The report, which has not been seriously disputed by the Pentagon, concludes that nothing US forces can do in Anbar will bring it under control. The writ of the central government does not run there, and the vacuum has been filled by insurgents.

In Baghdad too, nothing seems to work. Earlier this northern summer Maliki announced a huge security blitz in the capital by US and Iraqi troops.

The upshot has been greater violence in a city where private militias rule entire neighbourhoods. Now there is talk of a fortified cordon around the city - but scant prospect that this initiative will succeed where others have failed.

Not surprisingly, muttering in Washington against Maliki grows more audible by the day. Bush was being "driven crazy" by Maliki's indecisiveness, the New York Times reported on Thursday, quoting a former senior US official. The pictures of a smiling Maliki on his visit to Iran, apparently getting on famously with Washington's nemesis, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, cannot have improved Bush's humour.

The killings spare no one. Pentagon figures show attacks between May and August this year were running at 792 a week, up 24 per cent from the previous quarter. Sectarian violence is increasing, but so are attacks on US troops.

The hope was to reduce US forces in Iraq this US election year. Instead, they have been increased, from 127,000 in January to 144,000 now. Each day, two or three more American soldiers die. Since the March 2003 invasion more than 2690 have been lost.

Three decades ago, a decorated young veteran who would become the Democratic presidential candidate in 2004 famously asked, "How do you ask a man to become the last man to die for a mistake?"

The words of John Kerry to a Congressional committee probing the Vietnam War now apply to Iraq - to American soldiers and Iraqi civilians alike.

- INDEPENDENT