IN THE LAST 7 DAYS

At least 15 American servicemen were killed in the first three days of June, a pace that exceeds the daily fatality rate in May, when 127 troops were killed. May was the deadliest month since the invasion of Falluja in November 2004.

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The biggest killers are roadside bombs, responsible for four of every five American deaths in combat during the past three months. That trend has continued in the past few days, according to the military.

Three months after the start of the Baghdad security plan that has added thousands of American and Iraqi troops to the capital, they control fewer than one-third of the city’s neighborhoods, far short of the initial goal for the operation, according to some commanders and an internal military assessment...

On Aug. 13, 2002, the CIA completed a classified, six-page intelligence analysis that described the worst scenarios that could arise after a U.S.-led removal of Saddam Hussein: anarchy and territorial breakup in Iraq, a surge of global terrorism, and a deepening of Islamic antipathy toward the United States.

Titled "The Perfect Storm: Planning for Negative Consequences of Invading Iraq," the paper, written seven months before the war began, also speculated about al-Qaeda operatives taking "advantage of a destabilized Iraq to establish secure safe havens from which they can continue their operations," according to a report about prewar intelligence recently released by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

The report said the CIA paper also cautioned about outcomes such as declining European confidence in U.S. leadership, Hussein's survival and retreat with regime loyalists, Iran working to install a friendly regime "tolerant of Iranian policies," Afghanistan tipping into civil strife because U.S. forces were not replaced by United Nations peacekeepers and troops from other countries, and violent demonstrations in Pakistan because of its support of Washington.

I think it was a mistake to make the decision to go to Iraq, Wolf. But now that you are in Iraq, you don't want to compound that by making matters worse by not implementing a sensible way to strengthen the region as you depart...

Every soldier who has decided to serve is a patriot. And they deserve our gratitude for their sense of duty and for the courage with which they've served. And the way to honor the sacrifice that they have made, despite the mistakes of Rumsfeld, Cheney, the president, the mistakes of Paul Bremer, the mistakes of the military themselves, and they'd tell you that.

The way to honor that sacrifice is to get the policy right now. And the way you get it right now is by creating this new security arrangement, having the diplomacy necessary to get the Sunnis and Shias to settle the differences of a civil war. None of us signed up to send our troops to a civil war. Not even the military said they want to plunk their troops down in the middle of a civil war.

In fact, Donald Rumsfeld said if it became a civil war, we shouldn't be there. So it's time to face reality. The president isn't. We are.

I’m not going to ask for patience, because the truth is big policy changes like this are only achieved by impatient people – in huge numbers.