The ultimate election dirty trick is being played on the electorate by the Bush administration and the Pentagon: the hiding of the war in Iraq.

Now, with all the news out there about the U.S. death toll topping 1000, you might wonder what they're hiding, but the truth is it could have been, and surely will become much worse after November 2, especially if Bush wins the election.

While the insurgency in Iraq has been steadily growing in both size and sophistication, and the U.S. death toll--as well as the Iraqi death toll, of both insurgents and civilians--is mounting, this is happening at a time that the U.S. military is for the most part hunkered down in secure base camps avoiding combat!

Sure, American forces have been battling Moktadar al Sadr's Mahdi militia, and taking casualties, but the men they’re fighting are largely untrained kids from the Sadr City slums.

In fact, the larger number of U.S. deaths are still the result of attacks by Sunni fighters, who are based in central and eastern Iraq, especially in the area east of Baghdad and around Fallujah, referred to in the U.S. press as the Sunni Triangle.

The point to remember is that this whole region has been essentially surrendered to the insurgents, who are running most cities east of Baghdad openly.

If the U.S. were to try to retake this area, which it surrendered last April, it would find itself up against a serious and well-trained foe, in close urban conflict--a situation which would see battle deaths on both sides soar.

The Pentagon and the Bush campaign both know this, and have thus decided to do nothing in the run-up to November 2, for fear of having the high casualties derail Bush's re-election bid.

That might make good sense politically, but it is both grotesquely misleading and dishonest to the American people, and a betrayal of U.S. troops, since the longer they have to wait before taking on the Sunni insurgency, the more entrenched and better armed it will be, and the more Americans will die or be wounded.

For the rest of this column, please go (at no charge) to This Can't Be Happening! .