From the Organization of Women's Freedom in Iraq (OWFI), Dec. 7:

Darkest Scenario for Women of Iraq:
Public executions of women by Islamist militias in Baghdad

Shia Militias: A new wave of public executions against women is undertaken by Al Mahdi army. Dragging, flogging, hanging and shootings fall within the routine procedure of these executions which are taking place in growing numbers.

One question that needs to be asked, is how much of the Iraqi bloodbath is due to the "Salvador option" strategem that Newsweek claimed Negroponte wanted to employ to quell the Sunni insurgency, using Shia militias. From AP, Dec. 1:

Spy Chief Cites Perils in Iraq
National Intelligence Director John Negroponte says Iraq is far more precarious than much of Vietnam was when he served as a U.S. diplomat there in the 1960s.

From Middle East Newsline, Nov. 13:

The U.S. military plans to expand robot operations in Iraq.

If this turns out to be true, we wager the beneficiary will be Iyad Allawi. From UPI, Oct. 23:

CAIRO -- Iraqi army officers are reportedly planning to stage a military coup with U.S. help to oust the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

Even Bush appears to be facing the grim music from Iraq. Asked in an ABC News interview Oct. 18 whether he agreed with New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman's opinion that the violence in Iraq was "the jihadist equivalent of the Tet offensive," Bush responded: "He could be right. There's certainly a stepped-up level of violence, and we're heading into an election." Attacks in Iraq killed about 40 people on Oct 19. The death toll for US troops rose to 72 for October, which could become one of their deadliest months in two years. (Stuff.com, Oct. 20) Iraq’s interior minister, Jawad al Bolani, has pledged to purge his offices of sectarian influence, but this has failed to stem the escalating violence. (NYT, Oct. 14) Recent proposals by Washington to partition Iraq may be merely accepting a fait accompli. The south already appears to be a Shi'ite sectarian zone in Iran's orbit, and the north is de facto an independent Kurdish state. All that remains is for a Taliban-style Sunni theocracy to be declared in the center. This Oct. 16 report from Britain's The Herald indicates this may have already come to pass:

It seems that hubristic neocons, with their ambitions to dismantle Iraq (and, eventually, the rest of the Arab world) are moving in for the kill, posing it as a solution to the sectarian and ethnic strife their own policies unleashed. Will the State Department pragmatists prevail in stopping them, and somehow shoring up a centralized Iraq with Baghdad as its capital, the traditional Anglo-American strategy for stability-by-proxy in the region? From the London Times, Oct. 8, link and emphasis added:

The Primer George Bush Should Have Read!

Book Review:

Understanding Iraq
by William R. Polk
Harper Perennial, 2005

by Vilosh Vinograd

What are we to make of a book subtitled "The Whole Sweep of Iraqi History, From Genghis Khan's Mongols to the Ottoman Turks to the British Mandate to the American Occupation," which nonetheless clocks in at just over 200 pages of fairly large print?

Are we terrified yet? From AP, Sept. 29, emphasis added:

BAGHDAD - Al-Qaida in Iraq's leader, in a chilling audiotape released Thursday, called for nuclear scientists to join his group's holy war and urged insurgents to kidnap Westerners so they could be traded for a blind Egyptian sheik who is serving a life sentence in a U.S. prison.