But we have to stay the course! Really!

Updated The New York Times has revealed that

[a] classified National Intelligence Estimate prepared for President Bush in late July spells out a dark assessment of prospects for Iraq....

The estimate outlines three possibilities for Iraq through the end of 2005, with the worst case being developments that could lead to civil war, the officials said. The most favorable outcome described is an Iraq whose stability would remain tenuous in political, economic and security terms.

"There's a significant amount of pessimism," said one government official who has read the document, which runs about 50 pages.

That precisely echoes the recent findings of the UK's Royal Institute of International Affairs, which I mentioned on September 6.

In fact, it's also a prognosis I made all the way back on January 21:

Iraq is still, I believe, in for a long period of trouble. We've already seen both in some of the former states of the USSR and in the Balkans what can happen when long-suppressed ethnic rivalries re-emerge. I see Iraq slipping toward that same cliff.

And, it emerged, right around that same time the CIA was telling the White House the same thing: that Iraq "may be on a path to civil war."

In what appears to be a much-belated, slowly-dawning recognition of reality,

[t]he Bush administration said Tuesday that it would shift nearly 20 percent of its aid budget for Iraq out of reconstruction projects and into security and short-term job-creation programs, acknowledging that continued violence threatened its plans for elections early next year.

And the Miami Herald quoted a "senior administration official deeply engaged in Iraq policy" as saying US operations in Iraq are doing a much better job of coordinating and intelligence-gathering, insisting "We've finally got our act together."

But the same official said in the next breath "it's probably too late."

It most certainly is "too late" now, even assuming there ever was a time when it wasn't. In fact, in the words of the headline of an analysis in the September 20 edition of Newsweek International, "It's Worse Than You Think."

Sixteen months after the war's supposed end, Iraq's insurgency is spreading. ... The few relief groups that remain in Iraq are talking seriously about leaving. U.S. forces have effectively ceded entire cities to the insurgents, and much of the country elsewhere is a battleground. ...

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld once referred to America's foes in Iraq as "dead-enders," then the Pentagon maintained they probably numbered 5,000, and now senior military officials talk about "dozens of regional cells" that could call upon as many as 20,000 fighters.

Even that figure may well be much too low: Jeffrey White, a former senior Defense Intelligence Agency analyst now at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy,

said his conservative estimate is that there are some 100,000 Iraqis involved in the Sunni resistance, including fighters, messengers and people who provide logistical, housing and other assistance.

Meanwhile, members of the interim government are openly speculating that the elections planned for January aren't going to happen for a while.

A senior Iraqi official sees no chance of January elections: "I'm convinced that it's not going to happen. It's just not realistic. How is it going to happen?"

It's all a waste. The evidence keeps on building up, the weight of opinion keeps on coming down, more and more on one side - and it's the side away from George "Everything is coming up roses" Bush and John "He screwed up but we gotta keep going" Kerry. When your considered estimate is that the best you can hope for is the continuation of the bloody, chaotic status quo for the foreseeable future, I frankly don't see how anyone can reasonably argue that there is any logic or point to continuing to throw away lives - Iraqi, American, everyone - and yes, money. It's time, it's past time, to pack it in.

Call it "cutting and running." Call it "giving the terrorists a victory." Call it "weakness." Hell, call it "victory" if you want. I don't care. I'm not impressed with the warrior soundbites and the well-spun slogans. Instead, I care that the death toll climbs daily. I care that

[i]n a series of tightly sequenced attacks, at least 25 Iraqis were killed by suicide car bombings and a barrage of missile and mortar fire in several neighborhoods across Baghdad on Sunday.

The attacks were the most widespread in months, seeming to demonstrate the growing power of the insurgency and heightening the sense of uncertainty and chaos in the capital....

I care that on Wednesday,

[g]uerrillas bombed a Baghdad shopping street full of police recruits and fired on a police van north of the capital Tuesday in attacks that killed at least 59 people....

I care that such events, coupled with the fact that, again,

American forces have already ceded control to insurgents in a number of cities outside of Baghdad,

make it increasingly difficult for anyone to argue that things actually would be worse even in the short term if we left. I care that we are now shooting down civilians for the crime of milling around a burned-out Bradley fighting vehicle. I care that we then came up with two conflicting lies to explain it away. I care that, as reported by the Guardian (UK),

according to the US military's leading strategists and prominent retired generals, Bush's war is already lost.

I care that we have unleashed carnage and seem capable only of adding to it. I care about how much blood is on our hands. And I want no more of it.

Set The Damn Date & Get The Hell Out!

(Thanks to John Aravosis' AmericaBlog for the link to the Guardian story.)

Updated to include the Newsweek and Miami Herald items.