10.24.2006

Washington, D.C.

The Iraq conflict is “now worse than a civil war,” according to a new report from the Center for American Progress (CAP). The report says that Iraq is suffering “from at least four internal conflicts that risk spiraling further out of control.” The CAP report comes on a day when the Bush Administration is seeking to change the talking points it uses about Iraq rather than make an actual change in policy.

Rand Beers, President of the National Security Network, said the following about the CAP report, “In the face of chaos in Iraq, the Bush administration has now changed its talking points, but its policy continues to be to ‘stay the course’. This report is more compelling evidence of the Bush administration’s failed strategy in Iraq. ” “We need a change of strategy,” Beers said, “not just a change in semantics.”

The report also comes during a month that is already shaping up to be one of the most violent months of the war. Thus far in October 89 American soldiers and Marines have lost their lives and estimates of up to 1,000 Iraqis have been killed amid escalating sectarian violence.

Almost a year since the release of the Bush Administration’s National Strategy for Victory in Iraq, the CAP report concludes that the Bush administration’s policy toward Iraq, has left the country “on the brink of collapse, with growing violence, increased sectarian tensions and divisions in the Iraqi national government and few significant advances in Iraq’s reconstruction.” The four different conflicts identified in the report – sectarian civil war between Shiites and Sunnis in central Iraq; Intra-Shiite conflicts in the south; Sunni insurgency in the west; and ethnic tensions between Arabs and Kurds reveal that victory, as defined by the Bush Administration, remains elusive.

The CAP report also points out that despite the growing sectarian violence, U.S. and coalition forces are still the targets of the majority of attacks. Total attacks on coalition forces from January to July 2006 were 57 percent higher than reported in the same period during 2005.