Recent news that the Iraq War has made us less safe should be shouted from the rooftops. The Bush administration dove head first into the swimming pool without checking to see if there was any water. There was no water, and now thousands of Americans solders and Iraqi citizens lay at the bottom of the pool, paralyzed, bloody, wounded for life and dead.

We are to blame for this. Sure, maybe the polling places were hacked and thousands of Kerry voters were disenfranchised. True, the Supreme Court handed Bush the election in 2000 on a dubius legal theory. But the vote should not have been so close that these kinds of shenanigans would have made a difference. Millions of Americans put down the remote control long enough to allow Bush to scare them with terror before giving this punk another four years.

Over the weekend, the newspapers reported that the National Intelligence Estimate -- a group of all the intelligence experts in government -- concluded that "The American invasion and occupation of Iraq has helped spawn a new generation of Islamic radicalism and that the overall terrorist threat has grown since the Sept. 11 attacks." I wonder what Bush was thinking in August when he said, "You know, I've heard this theory about everything was just fine until we arrived, and kind of "we're going to stir up the hornet's nest" theory. It just doesn't hold water, as far as I'm concerned. The terrorists attacked us and killed 3,000 of our citizens before we started the freedom agenda in the Middle East." Interesting thing is that the National Intelligence Estimate was from a report completed in April 2006. Did the President read it? What about his speech writers?

As suggested by TalkingPointsMemo.com:

For the last six weeks and, in fact, the last six months, the White House and the president have been engaged in a coordinated campaign to convince the public that despite the setbacks and mistakes, the war in Iraq is a critical component of fighting the War on Terror. Making that argument is their plan for the next six weeks until the election. All the while, they've been sitting on a report that says that's flat wrong, a lie and that precisely the opposite is the case.

In the meantime, Iraq is on fire. Stories like the one below will haunt us for years to come. The victims who were burned to death in Iraq over the weekend are no different from the people we love. They did not ask for this war.

Women and Children Slaughtered in Baghdad By Amit R. Paley and Salih Dehema The Washington Post

Sunday 24 September 2006

Baghdad, Iraq - A fiery explosion tore through a line of people waiting to buy fuel Saturday and killed at least 38 people, mainly women and children, continuing the wave of tit-for-tat sectarian killings that have defied U.S. efforts to stanch the bloodshed.

The horrific blast sent women engulfed in flames screaming through the streets. Two preteen girls embraced each other as they burned to death, witnesses said. Later, wailing mourners thronged the scene of the blast, which was strewn with the shoes of victims and a woman's bloodied cloak, and voiced doubt that the reprisal violence would ever end.

"We carry our death certificates with us now, waiting only to fill in the date of death," said Bayan Jasem al-Kaaby, 40, a minibus driver, after he was burned by the explosion that rocked the Shiite Muslim slum of Sadr City at about 10 a.m.

A Sunni Arab insurgent group, Jamaat Jund al-Sahaaba, asserted responsibility for the bombing. The group said in an Internet statement that the attack was retribution for assaults on Sunnis in Al-Hurriyah district of Baghdad, where police said two mosques were attacked and five people killed Friday.

"We tell the malicious Shia that our swords are able to reach the depths of your areas, so stop the killing" of the Sunni people, the statement said, according to a translation by the SITE Institute.

It was not immediately clear what caused the explosion. Jamaat Jund al-Sahaaba asserted it had detonated a booby-trapped car, but witnesses said they saw a female suicide bomber, wearing a black veil that left only her eyes exposed, blow up as she tried to cut into the line of women waiting for kerosene. The bomber pushed a cart carrying a metal barrel filled with ball bearings, witnesses said.

An Interior Ministry official, Brig. Gen. Mohammed Salman, said at least 31 people had been wounded.

By midafternoon, the street where the explosion took place was still littered with abandoned yellow, red and blue jerrycans. Bits of flesh flecked the muddy ground, and blood pooled in front of Um Ali's home, left by a woman who clutched her infant child as she bled from a wound in her neck.

Bush was asked by CNN about increasing violence in Iraq recently. He downplayed it as "just a comma." Here is a transcript and some good commentary from TheCarpetbaggerReport.com on that interview:

BLITZER: Let's move on and talk a little bit about Iraq. Because this is a huge, huge issue, as you know, for the American public, a lot of concern that perhaps they are on the verge of a civil war, if not already a civil war…. We see these horrible bodies showing up, tortured, mutilation. The Shia and the Sunni, the Iranians apparently having a negative role. Of course, al Qaeda in Iraq is still operating.

BUSH: Yes, you see — you see it on TV, and that's the power of an enemy that is willing to kill innocent people. But there's also an unbelievable will and resiliency by the Iraqi people…. Admittedly, it seems like a decade ago. I like to tell people when the final history is written on Iraq, it will look like just a comma because there is — my point is, there's a strong will for democracy.

Even by Bush's already-low standards, it was a stunning comment. We're talking about a war that has claimed 2,700 American lives and seriously injured 20,000 more. It's a crisis that has, by any reasonable measure, made the threat of terrorism against Americans considerably worse. It's a misadventure that has cost taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars, to fight a war sold under false pretenses, and mismanaged with almost child-like incompetence.

Asked to explain himself, the president is unconcerned. Everything we're seeing is "just a comma." I'm sure that will bring comfort to the families of those who have sacrificed so much for Bush's mistakes.

Now, I think I know what the president means. As he sees it, history takes a long view, so three and a half years of mistakes, violence, poor judgment, and corruption are minor details that will be easily overlooked by a long-term triumph. Or so Bush says. Of course, by this logic, everything is "just a comma." Every life, every conflict, and every generation can be dismissed and made to appear trivial by backing up enough degrees.

It is, in other words, the ultimate cop out. Conditions in Iraq are getting worse, not better. The attacks are growing, not shrinking. The casualty rate is going up, not down. More than ever, we're looking to the president for leadership, sound judgment, and clear answers.

Instead, we get, "just a comma." Amazing.