[Ed. note: For several years (on KEXP) and several weeks (on KAOS), one of the most positively received weekly features of our ETS! radio commentaries has been our updates on the week's news in Iraq--news that goes beyond the daily drip of American casualty reports, that's often hard to find if you're not out looking for it. Well, someone finally noticed that most of that news has also not been appearing in ETS! itself. So, beginning with this issue and until this whole sorry misadventure is over (US military involvement in Iraq, that is, not ETS!--at this point it looks like both might go on forever, but the war is funded a lot better), we'll distill those radio nuggets into a column of short news updates on Iraq every issue. Enjoy. Or, um, not.]

Remember the Ankari shrine in Samarra? One of the holiest sites in Shiite Islam, on Feb. 22, 2006 its dome was destroyed by explosives planted by masked intruders, and the resulting retributive violence marked Iraq's escalation to full-scale civil war. Well, on Tuesday, June 12, the same shrine was bombed by masked intruders again, this time collapsing two minarets. The predictable violence followed this time, too; not so much in Baghdad, where a curfew and car ban kept the bloodshed to "normal" levels (save the heavy mortar fire on the Green Zone), but in Iraq's South, an area controlled not by the central Iraqi government (such as it is) but by Shiite militias. There, two Sunni mosques were blown up in retribution.

Headlines suggest that during Bush's 2007 escalation, er, "surge," the violence in Iraq has only gotten worse, and now the Pentagon itself has confirmed it. The Pentagon delivered the first of its required quarterly reports on the escalation to Congress last week, acknowledging that violence is up in Baghdad and around the country; it listed the average number of Iraqi civilians killed or wounded as over 100 a day (almost certainly an undercount, especially as many Iraqis are afraid to seek out hospitals or medical care for their wounds and so die later). Still, that's more than double what the Pentagon was claiming a year ago, in June of 2006.

How did Tony Snow spin this at the White House? The increasing chaos around the country is proof of the surge's "success," Snow claimed, because it's being forced out of Baghdad. Seriously. Only one problem: it's not true. A New York Times article the previous week noted that the escalation has so far only been able to control about one third of Baghdad--the easiest third. Of a city of six million people and scores of warring neighborhoods.

The escalation is due to be evaluated by Congress in September, and this month that debate claimed its first casualty: the career of Gen. Peter Pace, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Bush announced that Pace would not be renominated to the position specifically because his confirmation hearing would have to occur at about the same time, and the White House didn't want to have him facing embarrassing questions about Bush's botched war. So they sacked him instead, on the assumption that a new guy wouldn't be asked so many annoying questions. And perhaps most amazing was that they came right out and said this, as though everyone would share their view that Pace has done a bang-up job and the problem was that pestering Congressional oversight provided for in the Constitution. Checks, balances, that stuff. Yuck.

On June 5, the US lost its 3,500th soldier in Iraq. For comparison, the 3,000th was killed on New Year's Day, meaning in 2007 about 100 a month have been dying so far. Look for us to hit 4,000 this fall.

While the Bush cabal was hitting a coordinated talking point about comparing Iraq to the long-term US commitment in Korea (anything to avoid people comparing it to Vietnam instead), unnoticed by US media, the Iraqi parliament was having none of it. This month it passed a binding resolution requiring parliamentary approval to extend the current UN mandate allowing international troops in Iraq, a mandate which expires in December. Parliamentary members said that mandate would not be approved without a binding timetable for US withdrawal. This did two things: put the lie (again) to the notion that the Iraqis, even in the puppet US-installed regime, want US troops in their country, and showed that at least one legislative body is willing to take a stand on ending the war.

Meanwhile, back in Congress, Sen. Joe Lieberman (Idiot-CT) called for a US attack on Shiite Iran because of its "involvement" in supplying arms to Sunni insurgents in Iraq--a claim so ridiculous and blatantly false that even the White House stopped making it after a few trial balloons in January and February. (Instead, hawks working for Cheney are now trying to accuse Iran of funding the Taliban in Afghanistan, with even less success--the two are mortal enemies.)

The nightmare of a larger regional conflict that has been looming for a couple of years came closer this month, but not because of Iran or the renewed violence in Palestine or Lebanon. Turkish forces reportedly crossed over into northern Iraq in pursuit of separatist Kurds that have been using Iraq--with US protection--as a staging ground for their efforts to carve out an independent Kurdistan in southeast Turkey. One man's terrorist, another's freedom fighter.

The Telegraph reported last week that more than 11,000 UK troops have gone AWOL since 2003. As in the US, MoD officials blame the high number on "personal problems," not the war itself. Meanwhile, the British House of Lords ruled last week that Iraqi civilians arrested by Brits are protected by its Human Rights Act. Wouldn't it be nice to have something like that here in the Land of the Free? For Americans, let alone Iraqis?

Tidbits: The head of the UN refugee agency reported this month that four million Iraqis--one out of every six in the country--have now been displaced by the war. The head of the National Guard estimated that over half of all Guard equipment is now being used in Iraq, which explains why Greensburg KS is still rubble and why most states are woefully unprepared for natural disasters. Retired Army Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, who commanded Iraq in the war's first year, became the highest-ranking former Bush field commander to say publicly that the war in Iraq is lost. And, lastly, bummed that the war is getting worse and nobody seems to be even talking about negotiating? Fear not! The Islamic Army in Iraq and Al-Qaeda in Iraq, two Islamist groups which had been fighting each other in Iraq's 20-way civil war, announced a cease fire so that they can both better kill Americans. Who says diplomacy doesn't work?