The Post on line is running a Q&A in regard to the proposition that Iraq ought to be partitioned, divided into (at least) three ethnic and sectarian enclaves. This dumb idea has been put forward by people such as Leslie Gelb of the Council on Foreign Relations, Senator Joe Biden, and Peter Galbraith, a former U.S. diplomat who advises the Kurds.

A panel of commentators makes it clear how wrongheaded it all is.

Some excerpts:

Helena Luczywo, editor of Poland’s largest newspaper: "Dividing Iraq into two, three or any number of ethnic enclaves would be a truly disastrous idea. Iraq has to remain as a multicultural, multiethnic regional power to counter growing and extremely aggresive ambitions of Islamic Iran."

Mahmoud Sabit, Egyptian historian: "Any attempt to impose a three ethnic enclave solution against the wishes of the Iraqi people would be disastrous. Most Iraqis are against a partition of their country. Neither the Sunni nor Shia'a would accept a divided Iraq."

Ali Ettefagh, an international Iranian businessman: "The break-up of Iraq will cause regional conflicts and will lead to a massive devaluation of America's political capital as a superpower. It would be a spectacular failure that must be avoided."

Ahmed Rashid, Pakistani journalist and author of Taliban: "Messing with the borders of the Arabs states could open a Pandora's Box in an era when identity is being minisculized according to tribe, sect or even clan. National identity is already under threat, especially in the Arab Gulf region and Iraq's partition would only hasten the break up of the entire region into warring factions."

Olivier Roy, the French expert on political Islam: "The collapse of Iraq as a unified state will dramatically change the regional balance of power and will increase regional tensions because other forces will rush to fill the vacuum. Turkey and Iran will put a lot of pressure on an independent Kurdistan. The local Iraqi Shi'a-Sunni tensions will turn into a regional confrontation in which proxies like Iran and a coalition of Arab militant Sunnis face off against nationalists, supported by Saudi Arabia and Jordan. Thus, dividing up Iraq will extend its troubles to the whole region."

From analyst BB comes the following transcript, in which the Post's Tom Ricks -- author of Fiasco, the searing account of U.S. blunders in Iraq -- says that U.S. military sources are telling him that Israel has "purposely has left pockets of Hezbollah rockets in Lebanon, because as long as they're being rocketed, they can continue to have a sort of moral equivalency in their operations in Lebanon." Here's the text:

SHOW: CNN RELIABLE SOURCES
August 6, 2006 Sunday
TRANSCRIPT EXCERPT

Host: Howard Kurtz, media critic, Washington Post
Guest: Thomas Ricks, Washington Post

KURTZ: And joining us now here Thomas Ricks, Pentagon reporter for the Washington Post and author of the new book Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq. Tom Ricks, you've covered a number of military conflicts, including Iraq, as I just mentioned. Is civilian casualties increasingly going to be a major media issue? In conflicts where you don't have two standing armies shooting at each other?

THOMAS RICKS: I think it will be. But I think civilian casualties are also part of the battlefield play for both sides here. One of the things that is going on, according to some U.S. military analysts, is that Israel purposely has left pockets of Hezbollah rockets in Lebanon, because as long as they're being rocketed, they can continue to have a sort of moral equivalency in their operations in Lebanon.

KURTZ: Hold on, you're suggesting that Israel has deliberately allowed Hezbollah to retain some of it's fire power, essentially for PR purposes, because having Israeli civilians killed helps them in the public relations war here?

RICKS: Yes, that's what military analysts have told me.

KURTZ: That's an extraordinary testament to the notion that having people on your own side killed actually works to your benefit in that nobody wants to see your own citizens killed but it works to your benefit in terms of the battle of perceptions here.

RICKS: Exactly. It helps you with the moral high ground problem, because you know your operations in Lebanon are going to be killing civilians as well.

Take a look at my Washington Monthly story on former Secretary of State James Baker's Iraq Study Group. It's called "A Higher Power." It raises the question: Can anyone, even Jim Baker, get through to the president about the catastrophe in Iraq?

Since I know that few of my readers are also fans of Fox News, I suppose I should mention that I will be appearing tonight on the Hannity and Colmes show, broadcast 9 p.m. to 10 p.m. Eastern.

From the Post today:

Analysts and the Israeli military estimate that Hezbollah had anywhere from 12,000 to 16,000 rockets. The military estimates that Hezbollah has fired nearly 3,500 rockets into Israel -- most of them the medium- and shorter-range varieties.

I don’t know how many Hezbollah rockets Israel has destroyed. But I do know that the Post’s numbers mean that Israel has put as many as 29 per cent of them out of commission. Unfortunately, they’ve done so by provoking Hezbollah to fire them at Israel.`

With Israel contained in Lebanon, we can get back to the “other” war—the one that has caused Bush’s approval ratings to hover in the 30s. If you haven’t been paying attention (given Lebanon and the London plot), things are still going from bad to worse, and the U.S. plan to secure Baghdad isn’t working.

From McClatchey (ex-Knight-Ridder):

The Baghdad security plan, which some cast as the last chance to avert a civil war, will be thwarted by Iraq's prime minister because he is unwilling to tackle the country's biggest security threat, many residents and politicians fear.

The plan calls for U.S. forces to sweep neighborhoods and help restore services, eventually leaving the capital under Iraqi military and police control. If that happens, U.S. troops could begin to withdraw. If it doesn't, the country's sectarian conflict could spiral out of control and escalate into a regional war between Iraq's Shiite and Sunni Muslim neighbors.

The offensive hasn't produced any major improvements in the capital since it began on June 14, and many Iraqis fear the plan is doomed by Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's willingness to attack Sunni insurgents but not the Shiite militias that support his Dawa political party.

Meanwhile, the Badr Brigade, the main Shiite militia force, is not only not disbanding, but it wants to set up formal security teams to guard Shiite areas, reports Reuters:

A Shi'ite leader has called for neighborhood committees to provide security in their own districts, casting further doubt on the ability of Iraqi and U.S. forces to reduce violence levels in Baghdad.

Hadi al-Amiri, a member of parliament and head of a Shi'ite militia, said the controversial committees were essential for security because Iraqi forces still lacked training and were not ready to tackle militants and insurgents.

"Our forces are not complete to take on this wide terrorism," he said in a recorded debate broadcast on state television on Sunday.

So it seems like the civilians in the Bush administration want to accuse Iran of causing all evil in Iraq, but the generals don’t.

Could that be because the generals realize that sparking a confrontation with Iran could be disastrous for U.S. forces in the region, while the civilians, including Ambassador Khalilzad, say: “Bring ‘em on!’?”

I’ll report—you decide. Both statements are from this week:

Khalilzad:

Iran has got Hizbollah in Lebanon. Iran has got some forces here. There is the possibility they might encourage those forces to create increased instability here.

General Caldwell, spokesman for U.S. forces in Iraq:

There is nothing that we definitively have found to say that there are any Iranians operating within the country of Iraq.

I'm not sure I want to go see Oliver Stone's "World Trade Center" movie, though I suppose I will. I don't quite see the point of getting all worked up over the blood-and-guts of an atrocity, when it's the politics of the thing that matters to me. (Years after the opening of Washington, D.C.'s Holocaust Museum, I haven't been, and I doubt I will go.) But, writing for TomDispatch, Ruth Rosen has penned what seems to a pretty good rendition of what the (missing) postscript to Stone's tear-jerker should have been:

"Government officials later confirmed that the organization which plotted the destruction of the World Trade Center was al-Qaeda, led by Osama Bin Laden, a Saudi Arabian, and Ayman al-Zawahiri, an Egyptian. Nineteen men executed the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Fifteen of them came from Saudi Arabia; the remaining four from Egypt, The United Arab Emirates, and Lebanon. None of them came from Iraq."

Maybe in the sequel? But somehow I doubt we're going to see Stone make a movie about heroic Iraqi firefighters and cops pulling bodies out of wreckage in Baghdad that we've caused. And unlike "World Trade Center," which touts a revenge-minded ex-Marine who re-upped to fight in Iraq, I doubt that the sequel will show an angry Iraqi pledging revenge against Dick Cheney. Safe to say?

Those who scoff at the mainstream media will have trouble explaining the page 1 story in the Times today, a blockbuster expose. And, it saves its biggest punch for the end. I won’t do that. Here it is:

Some outside experts who have recently visited the White House said Bush administration officials were beginning to plan for the possibility that Iraq’s democratically elected government might not survive.

“Senior administration officials have acknowledged to me that they are considering alternatives other than democracy,” said one military affairs expert who received an Iraq briefing at the White House last month and agreed to speak only on condition of anonymity.

Get that? “Considering alternatives other than democracy.” That can mean a lot of things, and I’d like to see some fairly intensive follow-up. Does that mean that the United States is thinking about a coup d’etat in Iraq? If so, by whom? There has been a lot of chatter in Baghdad over the past several months about a coup, usually said to be plotted by disaffected Sunnis. There has also been talk of a national unity-type government by fiat, sort of a collective coup, but who knows what that might mean. One thing for sure: the title of the piece I wrote for TomPaine.com recently (“Maliki: Dead Man Walking”) could not be more appropriate. He’s history.

I’m sure you’ve all read the whole Times piece, which makes other invaluable points. It notes that the insurgency is stronger than ever, with 2,625 IED’s targeting U.S. forces in July alone – a staggering total:

“The insurgency has gotten worse by almost all measures, with insurgent attacks at historically high levels,” said a senior Defense Department official who agreed to discuss the issue only on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak for attribution. “The insurgency has more public support and is demonstrably more capable in numbers of people active and in its ability to direct violence than at any point in time.”

And it reports on a secret Defense Intelligence Agency analysis of Iraq, which provided the intelligence support for the recent assertions by the generals that Iraq is headed toward civil war:

In late July, D.I.A. officials briefed several Senate committees about the insurgent and sectarian violence. The presentation was based on a draft version of what became the Aug. 3 study, and one recipient described it as “extremely negative.” That presentation was followed by public testimony on Aug. 3 by Gen. John P. Abizaid, the top American military commander in the Middle East, who told the Senate Armed Services Committee that the sectarian violence was “probably as bad as I’ve seen it, in Baghdad in particular” and said if it was not stopped, “it is possible that Iraq could move towards civil war.” General Abizaid later emphasized that he was “optimistic” that the slide toward civil war could be prevented.

All in all, a stunning piece. Kudos to Michael R. Gordon, Mark Mazzetti and Thom Shanker.

Of all the things about the president’s war on terrorism that can be criticized, the biggest is the notion that it deserves to be called a “war.” But Bush and Cheney insist that it is a war, and they want to boost the Special Forces and the new Special Operations Command to fight it. However, a new report from the GAO notes that the administration hardly has any idea what the new, gung-ho Special Ops people might do.

The SOC, says GAO, gives the secretary of defense vast power for covert action overseas. Among the missions for the SOC are “offensive measures taken to prevent, deter, and respond to terrorism,” “short duration strikes and other small-scale offensive actions undertaken to seize, destroy, capture, recover, or inflict damage on designated personnel or materials,” “a broad spectrum of military and paramilitary operations,” “psychological operations [to] influence [the] emotions, motives, objective reasoning, and ultimately the behavior of foreign governments, organizations, groups, and individuals.” And of course, “other operations … specified by the President or the Secretary of Defense.”

The report says that since 9/11 the Bush administration has already expanded the SOC and wants even more. “The number of special operations forces personnel deployed for operations has greatly increased,” says GAO, noting that deployments have risen 64 per cent. It adds: “DOD plans to significantly increase the number of special operations forces personnel.” But it says:

The Special Operations Command has not yet fully determined all of the personnel requirements needed to meet its expanded mission. … It has not yet completed analyses to determine … how many headquarters staff are needed to plan and synchronize global actions against terrorist networks—a new mission for the Command.

What exactly are these guys going to do? Invade the suburbs of London? Attack mosques in Germany? Goosestep down streets in Amsterdam to intimidate radical Muslims there? I mean, the so-called War on Terrorism doesn’t need a bunch of hoo-ah types. Last time I checked, it was these heavy-handed displays of muscle that were making things worse, not better, from Afghanistan to Iraq.

Funding for the SOC is up from $3.8 billion in 2001 to $6.4 billion in 2005. It’s projected to rise to $8 billion by 2007 and increase steadily through 2011, says GAO. The number of Special Forces battalions, which was 55 in 2001, will skyrocket to 94 by 2011, and the Pentagon is constantly producing reports to justify bigger increases. (A lot of Democrats love this stuff, too.) The GAO notes that the Pentagon is scrambling to be able to recruit for these huge increases, paying big bonuses to retain people too.

Henry Crumpton, the State Department’s anti-terrorism guy, tells CFR (correctly) that Al Qaeda is pretty much crippled: “Because of out collective operational success, Al Qaeda is crippled and certainly not the organization it was.” And he properly refuses to put the blame on Al Qaeda for the would-be terrorists nabbed in London. He mostly makes sense, until the end of the CFR interview, when he darkly tries to scare us with the idea that unnamed terrorists are trying to get their grubby hands on WMD. Here is the exchange:

Do you have evidence that terror groups are still trying actively to acquire various forms of WMD?

Absolutely.

Any anecdotes that could shed some light on that?

All I could offer you are some historical public record references. One of the most chilling is the al-Qaeda operative who's currently in Malaysian detention—[Yazid] Sufaat. He was tasked to develop and deploy a biological weapon in Southeast Asia and obviously I can't talk about some of the ongoing intelligence operations and investigations but yes, multiple terrorist groups are searching for weapons of mass destruction.

In other words: Yes, they're out there, building nukes in garages and bioweapons in their bathtubs. But I'm not gonna tell ya where.