Full-blown civil war has been raging in Iraq for weeks now, yet the White House is still claiming "pockets of insurgency" and "Al Qaeda attacks." Anyone who has been on the ground in Iraq for any time will tell you that civil strife among Kurds, Sunnis and Shiites has been smoldering and frequently blazing up for many months. But now a full-blown civil war has begun.



The opening salvo of this escalation exploded, ironically, the same day that the Katrina crisis was at its height. On August 31, hundreds of Shiite men, women and children were killed during a stampede on a bridge in Baghdad. The cause of the stampeded was the equivialent of someone maliciously shouting "Fire!" in a crowded theater - only in this case someone screamed that a suicide bomber was on the bridge. The fact that Sunni terrorists were suspected of orchestrating this disaster was swept quickly under the US media carpet.



Since then, the attacks on Iraqi civilians has very much followed the pattern of a full-blown civil war. Yet the Bush administration and its STILL unquestioning cohorts in the media continue to disseminate the tale that it's all Al Qaeda and that "if" a civil war breaks out, it will be because of Al Qaeda. It will not be blamed on the US presence in Iraq, which has deepened and aggravated centuries-old divisions within the country. It will not be blamed on ongoing conditions in many regions (lack of clean water, sewage in the streets, lack of housing, lack of medical care) that are akin to the conditions in New Orleans following Katrina.



Civil war is what many predicted would occur in the aftermath of the Iraq invasion. The nonexistence of a post-war plan, the insistence on US control of the "reconstruction government" (which inevitably led to "triangling" among Iraq factions), and the availability of so much weaponry left over from the Saddam regime that was never secured by the US, all made for a sure-fire recipe for civil war. Bush and his cohorts were warned of this outcome, and warned repeatedly. Like all such warnings, it was ignored.



If there is anyone to blame for Iraq's escalating civil war, it is G. W. Bush. But don't expect to hear him "take responsibility" any time soon. Not when he still has others to blame.