Opinion (Paul Koring): Only grim scenarios left in Iraq

WASHINGTON — Iraq, rent by bloody and worsening violence, eclipses all else on President George W. Bush's agenda.

Although 2006 dawned amid hopes that democracy would flower into peace and (eventual) prosperity, allowing the unloved U.S. occupation forces to begin heading home, the reality has been grim.

In Iraq, the cost in blood and bullion has soared. De facto ethnic cleansing, prodded by death squads, is crudely redrawing the country. The middle class has largely fled Baghdad, where the muddy, meandering Tigris River is being transformed into a grim "green line" between Sunni and Shia. More than 100 Iraqis now die every day, most of them brutally murdered by sectarian killers.

Overall death tallies vary widely, but tens (maybe hundreds) of thousands of Iraqis, most of them civilians and most killed by other Iraqis, have been slain since the war began. The number of U.S. military dead stood at 2,978 Tuesday afternoon, which is at least five more than the number of people killed in the Sept. 11 attacks. And the conflict will bleed the U.S. treasury by what will soon be an unfathomable $1-trillion (U.S.). Yet the violence is worse than ever.

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