Kennedy: "staying the course is not a viable option."

[dajoki]

Daily Telegraph
http://www.news.com.au/sundaytelegraph/story/0,22049,20334671-5001028,00.html

Iraq on the brink: Pentagon
From correspondents in Washington

September 02, 2006 12:00

THE conflict in Iraq has all the makings of a civil war, which can nonetheless be avoided, according to a Pentagon report released overnight.

Violence between minority Sunnis, who controlled Iraq under former President Saddam Hussein, and the majority Shi'ites, who are asserting themselves after decades of oppression, now defines the conflict, it stated.

Sectarian violence is spreading north, outside of Baghdad into Diyala province and oil-rich Kirkuk, it said. Death squads, sometimes with "rogue elements" of US-trained Iraqi security forces, are heavily responsible for the sectarian violence, including execution-style killings, it said.

And some ordinary Iraqis now look to illegal militias to provide for their safety and sometimes for social needs and welfare, undermining Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's government, it said.

<<snip>>

Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid of Nevada said the report showed speeches by Mr Bush, Mr Cheney and Mr Rumsfeld "are increasingly disconnected from the facts on the ground in Iraq. Even the Pentagon acknowledges Iraq is tipping into civil war."

Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Edward Kennedy said the report "reaffirms what the American people already understand: the conditions of civil war exist, violence in Iraq is spiralling out of control and staying the course is not a viable option."