Fareed Zakaria: "Iraq is Now a Civil War"

Fareed Zakaria may have been in a secret meeting with Paul Wolfowitz five years ago figuring out how to frame an Iraq invasion -- or even agitating at the meeting for many more troops for such an invasion and occupation.

Today, however, Zakaria captures clearly the consequences that have been wrought from America's misguided adventure.

Zakaria writes:

Iraq is now in a civil war.

Thirty thousand Iraqis have died there in the past three years, more than in many other conflicts widely recognized as civil wars. The number of internal refugees, mostly Sunni victims of ethnic cleansing, has exploded over the past few months, and now exceeds a quarter of a million people. (The Iraqi government says 240,000, but this doesn't include Iraqis who have fled abroad or who may not have registered their move with the government.)

The number of attacks on Shiite mosques increases every week: there have been 69 such attacks since February, compared with 80 in the previous two and a half years. And the war is being fought on gruesome new fronts. CBS News's Lara Logan has filed astonishing reports on the Health Ministry, which is run by supporters of radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.

According to Logan, hospitals in Baghdad and Karbala are systematically killing Sunni patients and then dumping their bodies in mass graves.

This Iraq crusade has been so harmful to so many, and America's ability to do great things in the world has been crippled by the likes of Wolfowitz, Feith, Cheney, Bolton, Rumsfeld and others.

It sickens me that the 'Axis of Evil' man himself, David Frum, who is also one of the people who helped diminish the stature and power of the United States is able to so freely warmonger for more.

-- Steve Clemons