Iran's cleverly concocted Middle East "crisis" has us focused away from the Iraq Civil War

While missiles and bombs are exploding in Gaza, Israel and Lebanon, the Civil War goes unabated (actually increasing in intensity month by month) in Iraq -- with 150,000 American troops embedded in the middle of the mayhem and killing.

The map above showed clearly what the problem is and always has been -- even under Saddam Hussein, although he kept it under control through his repressive and (often) brutal control. Just look carefully at the color codes on the map and ask yourself, "is this something with which we should be involved?"

Reading the book The End of Iraq by Peter Galbraith has taught me three main lessons: (1) Saddam should have been removed long ago, and we should have taken advantage of our having Iraq essentially in a box, by providing support to the dissident Shiites and Kurds and (yes) even many Sunnis without inserting ground forces (other than Special Forces, as needed); (2) once having made the mistake of "Shock and Awe" and the subsequent invasion, we should have taken the first opportunity to disengage and (basically) do what is stated in (1); and (3) we should (right now!) redeploy our troops in the manner suggested by Representative John Murtha so as to do step (1) NOW!!
Rep. John Murtha (D. Pennsylvania)

Better late than never ... and we wouldn't have our young men and women in the middle of what has clearly evolved into a full-fledged civil war there. The civilian casualties were 2,669 in May, 3,149 in June and will be close to 4,000 in July at the current rate of killing. Yesterday's killing of 59 in a single car/van bomb explosion were only part of the 130 or so killed in that 24-hour period.

We are caught in the position of trying to stem the tide of Sunni car bombs while also trying to reign in the Shiite militias that are indiscriminately pulling Sunnis from their cars and executing them on the spot. Of course, our troopers there are getting smarter and are staying low (remaining in compounds and "safe areas") which only allows the civil war to grow and has even the Iraqis asking, "what are the US troops even in Iraq for?"

I ask the same question myself.