One gets the feeling,

That if the news media ever remembers Iraq again, they will not mention that it has fundementally changed to from a probable civil war to Baghdad becoming the worst place on earth. More people die in Baghdad each day, than die at what has been the worst of the current Israel/Hezbollah/Lebanon conflict.

Yet, despite the worsening (ever worsening) situation the media has abandoned the death-throws (the real final throes) of the American experiment, the horrendously failed American experiment, that is Iraq.

One wonders if they are even going to pay attention to the dog-and-pony show that will be the visit of Al-Maliki this week. For Al-Maliki's speech before Congress will be the emptiest celebration of non-achievement and non-success since Ford came there to announce the "WIN" button.

The deterioration continues to pick up speed:

Invoking the sanctity of human life, George Bush wielded the presidential veto for the first time in his presidency to halt US embryonic stem cell research in its tracks. He even paraded one-year-old Jack Jones, born from one of the frozen embryos that can now never be used for federally funded research, and talked of preventing the "taking of innocent human life". How hollow that sounds to Iraqis.

More people are dying here - probably more than 150 a day - in the escalating sectarian civil war between Shia and Sunni Muslims and the continuing war with US troops than in the bombardment of Lebanon...

...I never expected the occupation of Iraq by the US and Britain to end happily. But I did not foresee the present catastrophe. Baghdad has survived the Iran-Iraq war, the 1991 Gulf War, UN sanctions, more bombing and, finally, a savage guerrilla war. Now the city is finally splitting apart, and - most surprising of all - this disaster scarcely gets a mention on the news as the world watches the destruction of Beirut so many miles away.