Amid all the optimism that voters will shift to the Dems in November, here's a worrying poll result from AP:

Although the latest Associated Press-Ipsos polls showed more Americans favor congressional Democrats over Republicans, the GOP still has the edge in dealing with issues such as foreign policy and terrorism.

The poll found that Republicans in Congress — 43 percent approval — have an advantage over Democrats — 33 percent approval — on handling foreign policy and the war on terrorism.

No way to minimize that one. It shows how much work has to be done between now and November explaining (at least to those Americans intelligent enough to pay attention) that Bush is not making the country safer.

Appended to the end of a New York Times account on July 19 of the chaos, bloodletting, and civil war raging in Iraq, with more than 14,000 deaths reported since January (and that only the tip of the iceberg), was this unintentionally hilarious nonsense from your secretary of energy:

The American energy secretary, Samuel W. Bodman, who met with Iraq’s oil and electricity ministers in Baghdad, had a rosy view of progress here since his last visit in 2003.

“The situation seems far more stable than when I was here two or three years ago,” he said in an interview in the fortified Green Zone. “The security seems better, people are more relaxed. There is an optimism, at least among the people I talked to.”

Of course, Bodman hasn't been conversing with the 14,000 dead Iraqis.

From the Post's account today of the brewing revolt among Republican members of Congress against Bush's Iraq fiasco are these gems from Rep. Gil Gutknecht:

"Members, now is not the time to go wobbly [on Iraq]."

That was Gutknecht in the June, 2006, debate over a House resolution on Iraq.

"I guess I didn't understand the situation."

That's Gutknecht today.

The esteemed Republican, who was apparently hit by a bolt of enlightenment, went on: "What the White House is saying is, 'Stay the course, stay the course.' I don't think that the course is politically sustainable."

Tony Cordesman, a sober-minded conservative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, has long been skeptical of the neoconservative project for the Middle East. In a recent commentary, he wonders if in fact we are losing in Iraq. He has been waxing pessimistic for a while, but in this piece, excerpted below, it seems that Cordesman is beginning wonder wheher the whole thing is lost. Importantly, he points out that the violence is not confined to Baghdad, where 14,000 have died since January. Basra and Kirkuk, too, are falling into civil war.

Worse, the Iraqi police and security forces are simply not ready for the mission as long as there is no political compromise. The most frightening indicator of just how bad the situation really is, is that the Iraqi government has now had to ask Iraqis to check the IDs of police and soldiers to make sure they are legitimate. Fine when they are legitimate. A great way to get killed when they are not. The “year of the police” may well be making real progress, but the manning totals for Iraqi police and security forces are meaningless. It is all too clear that many who were trained and equipped are not still serving and that many who do serve are passive and/or corrupt. They also are often outgunned and outmanned by the militias and local security forces, in Baghdad and in many other areas.

Intra-Shi'ite violence and divisions are also growing, and reports that do not identify Basra as a massive security problem and flashpoint are simply decoupled from reality. The same is true of Kirkuk, where actual violence is still limited, but the militias are steadily building up and ethnic cleansing is rising. Smaller towns and cities are also problems, reported or not, and serious tensions are emerging between Sadr and the mainstream “quietest” Shi'ite clergy, whether they are reported or not.

These trends strongly argue that the Iraqi government and United States are now losing, not winning. They are scarcely based on firm data, however, and they scarcely mean the struggle is lost. What they do mean is that the Maliki government must act far more quickly and decisively, that Iraq's factions have no time to bargain by attrition if they seriously want to avoid civil war or dividing the country, and that the United States must be prepared to rush in aid if this can move political compromises forward. No one knows the odds of failure or success at this point, but they are notably worse in July than in early June, and they have been slowly deteriorating for months.

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news to those who think that Americans are finally starting to "get it" about Iraq, bu the latest Harris poll shows how bad things are:

Despite being widely reported in the mainstream news media that the US and other countries have not found any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, as well as Democrat talking points that Bush lied about WMD, more Americans (50%) think that Iraq had such weapons when the US-led coalition invaded Iraq.

This is a 14 percent increase from February 2005, when only 36 percent thought Iraq had WMD. This may be attributed to the recent discovery of an intelligence report describing over 500 shells containing WMD being found by US military forces in Iraq.

And then there is this gem, as Iraq's civil war kills at least 100 people a day:

Seventy-two percent (72%) believe that the Iraqis are better off now than they were under Saddam Hussein (slightly down from February 2005 when 76 percent said this was true).

Over at Harper's, Ken Silverstein reports that John Negroponte, the director of national intelligence, has said no to demands from CIA analysts and others to produce a National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq. He's trying to protect President Bush from bad news.

“What do you call the situation in Iraq right now?” asked one person familiar with the situation. “The analysts know that it's a civil war, but there's a feeling at the top that [using that term] will complicate matters.” Negroponte, said another source regarding the potential impact of a pessimistic assessment, “doesn't want the president to have to deal with that.”

It's not new for Negroponte, though. I reported long ago that when Negroponte was U.S. ambassador in Iraq, he was constantly on the phone to then-Secretary of State Colin Powell, chirping cheery news about the battle against the resistance in Iraq, even as the CIA station chief sent a steady stream of bad news to Washington. Eventually, according to intelligence sources, Powell's own intelligence team had to intervene directly, to counter Negroponte's happy talk and to make sure Powell was getting the straight stuff. Good to know Negroponte is still the same.

Here's a back of the envelope calculation: the 510 people killed in Lebanon by Israel, in a population of 3.8 million, is the equivalent of more than a dozen 9/11's, when compared to America's population. That's roughly the equivalent of a 9/11-type attack in Lebanon each day, every day, since the Israeli onslaught began. And, of course, the 510 dead is a very conservative estimate.

A stunning piece in the New York Times on the morgues in Iraq, where relatives of those killed (especially Sunnis) are unable to claim dead bodies because Shiite gangs attack even those coming to claim the corpses.

Toward the end, it notes this:

At least twice a week, a member of Mr. Sadr’s organization, Sheik Jamal al-Sudani, gathers a crew of men to pile the bodies onto a large truck and drive them to the Shiite holy cities of Najaf and Karbala for an anonymous Shiite burial. Mr. Sudani said the lightest loads number about 70 bodies while the heaviest have topped 250.

Read that again. It means that twice a week, Iraqis haul away between 70 and 250 unclaimed dead bodies to be buried in what, we presume, are mass graves. It means that something like 200 or more bodies are hauled away like dead animals,victims of the civil war, every week -- not counting the many hundreds actually claimed by grieving relatives.

From the Jerusalem Post:

Defense officials told the Post last week that they were receiving indications from the US that America would be interested in seeing Israel attack Syria.

This leak to Wolf Blitzer's former employer could be apocryphal. But if I were President Assad, I'd worry.

The apoplectic, and always borderline psychotic Martin Peretz of TNR sputters bile on Lebanon and Israel, in the latest issue. It is full of big words like "ultramontane" and "chiliastic," proving that Marty has a dictionary. But otherwise it is full of the typical verbiage of the editor of the Worst Magazine in the World. To wit:

Let's face it: Aside from fighting for themselves, the Israelis are also fighting for us.

And:

After Prime Minister Ehud Barak took the IDF out of its last small salient of occupied Lebanon, Israel succumbed to a failure of will.

And this gem:

The administration has evinced stunning moral and military clarity in the face of international pressure to rush toward a premature resolution, and its Democratic opponents seem also to have accepted its logic, if some a bit squeamishly.

Peretz also asserts ludicrously that Hezbollah is a threat to "the very existence of Israel." Uh huh.