It Looks as if Game is up for Americans in Iraq: "There was no way that U.S. Marines could occupy Fallujah and destroy the local resistance forces without killing thousands of Iraqis, most of them civilians. There was no way that they could ever identify and capture the men who killed and mutilated the "contractors." Besieging the city was an emotional response that made no military or political sense, as they realized about three weeks too late.

""They" may be Paul Bremer's occupation regime in Baghdad, or it may be the micromanagers back in the Pentagon who persistently usurp command functions in Iraq; the inquest that will finally lay the blame for this fatal move will only happen after U.S. troops retreat from Iraq months or years from now.

"But in only one month they have inadvertently succeeded in reviving Iraqi pride and national identity on the basis of a shared anti-Americanism, and given the whole Arab and Muslim world nightly television lessons in how popular resistance can defeat U.S. power. Fallujah has become a no-go zone for American troops, and that is also the likely outcome of the parallel showdown in the holy city of Najaf between American troops and the militia of radical Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. Making these deals does less damage to the U.S. position than plowing on with unwinnable confrontations, but the damage has already been very great. The whole Arab world is absorbing the lesson that U.S. military power has its limits -- at the same time as it seethes in fury and humiliation at the brutal abuse of Iraqi prisoners by U.S. and British forces."

"One picture says it all: A 21-year-old female American soldier grinning cockily at the camera, a cigarette dangling from her mouth, as she points in mockery at a naked male Iraqi prisoner who is being forced to masturbate by his captors. You could not come up with an image better calculated to enrage and alienate Muslim opinion if you hired all the ad agencies in the world.

"So the entire U.S. neoconservative adventure in the Middle East, never very plausible, is now doomed, though it will drag on in a broken-backed way for some time to come. Even the option of handing Iraq over to the United Nations and replacing American troops there with Muslim troops under U.N. command, still viable a month ago, will soon be foreclosed unless U.N. officials take a firmer stand against the occupation regime. It is going to get very messy."

It Looks as if Game is up for Americans in Iraq: "There was no way that U.S. Marines could occupy Fallujah and destroy the local resistance forces without killing thousands of Iraqis, most of them civilians. There was no way that they could ever identify and capture the men who killed and mutilated the "contractors." Besieging the city was an emotional response that made no military or political sense, as they realized about three weeks too late.

""They" may be Paul Bremer's occupation regime in Baghdad, or it may be the micromanagers back in the Pentagon who persistently usurp command functions in Iraq; the inquest that will finally lay the blame for this fatal move will only happen after U.S. troops retreat from Iraq months or years from now.

"But in only one month they have inadvertently succeeded in reviving Iraqi pride and national identity on the basis of a shared anti-Americanism, and given the whole Arab and Muslim world nightly television lessons in how popular resistance can defeat U.S. power. Fallujah has become a no-go zone for American troops, and that is also the likely outcome of the parallel showdown in the holy city of Najaf between American troops and the militia of radical Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. Making these deals does less damage to the U.S. position than plowing on with unwinnable confrontations, but the damage has already been very great. The whole Arab world is absorbing the lesson that U.S. military power has its limits -- at the same time as it seethes in fury and humiliation at the brutal abuse of Iraqi prisoners by U.S. and British forces."

"One picture says it all: A 21-year-old female American soldier grinning cockily at the camera, a cigarette dangling from her mouth, as she points in mockery at a naked male Iraqi prisoner who is being forced to masturbate by his captors. You could not come up with an image better calculated to enrage and alienate Muslim opinion if you hired all the ad agencies in the world.

"So the entire U.S. neoconservative adventure in the Middle East, never very plausible, is now doomed, though it will drag on in a broken-backed way for some time to come. Even the option of handing Iraq over to the United Nations and replacing American troops there with Muslim troops under U.N. command, still viable a month ago, will soon be foreclosed unless U.N. officials take a firmer stand against the occupation regime. It is going to get very messy."