it doesn't look good...

what a mess Iraq is. An absolute mess.

It was a huge mess before and now it has got alot worse and will get alot worse as long as US forces occupy foreign terrain and the people that own that terrain want them out.

I am glad Howard decided to pull out.

Meaningless death to the young has no meaning. Bush and Blair have alot to answer for these kids deaths.

WHERE ARE THE WMD's may I ask ?? I would like to know the answer to this question, the international community would like to know as well.

The yanks are calling Iraqi militia 'terrorists'. How on earth can they be terrorists when all they are doing is protecting their terrain against invading aggressors.?

Bush you are an idiot, all your sympathisers and supporters are idiots as well.. I just hope what goes around.. comes around...

By Andrew Marshall

BAGHDAD, Oct 2 (Reuters) - Guerrilla attacks in Iraq have

become more lethal, the top U.S. general in the country said on

Thursday after three soldiers died in one day, adding urgency

to American efforts to garner help stabilizing the country.

With the military warning him to expect more casualties,

the pressure was on at home too for U.S. President George W.

Bush.

David Kay, the CIA official directing the weapons search in

Iraq, told U.S. lawmakers the arms-hunting team had found no

stockpiles of biological or chemical weapons but would keep

searching.

"We are not yet at the point where we can say definitively

either that such weapon stocks do not exist, or that they

existed before the war and our only task is to find where they

have gone," Kay said in a statement obtained by Reuters.

U.S. efforts to draft a new United Nations resolution on

Iraq drew unusual criticism from Secretary General Kofi Annan,

who said the world body could not play a proper political role

in Iraq under the terms of the U.S. draft.

At least 84 U.S. soldiers have been killed in action since

May 1 when Bush declared major combat in Iraq over.

"The enemy has evolved. It is a little bit more lethal,

little bit more complex, little bit more sophisticated and in

some cases a little bit more tenacious," said Lt. Gen. Ricardo

Sanchez, commander of ground forces in Iraq.

"As long as we are here the coalition need to be prepared

to take casualties," he told a news conference. "We should not

be surprised if one of these days we wake up to find there's

been a major firefight or a major terrorist attack."

Wednesday, a 4th Infantry Division soldier was killed in a

rocket-propelled grenade attack near the town of Samarra, a

female soldier from the same division died in a remote-control

bomb attack near Tikrit, and in Baghdad a soldier was shot and

killed while patrolling the Mansur neighborhood.

The violence continued Thursday in the town of Falluja, a

center of resistance to U.S. forces. Police said U.S. gunfire

killed an Iraqi man and wounded a woman and a six-year-old girl

after an American patrol was shot at Thursday. Two police

officers were also wounded.

Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who led the

campaign to oust Saddam over his alleged banned weapons, face

mounting political pressure over the failure to find any.

Efforts in New York to agree a wider role for the United

Nations are in stark contrast to events on the ground in

Baghdad, where many international U.N. staff have been pulled

out following two suicide bomb attacks on their headquarters.



UN STUDYING PROPOSAL

Washington is seeking a new resolution giving the United

Nations a broader mandate and encouraging reluctant allies to

provide more troops and cash to police and rebuild the

country.

A revised U.S. draft of a Security Council resolution gives

the United Nations a list of duties, similar to earlier

versions. But it falls short of demands by France, Russia and

Germany that the world body play a pivotal, independent role in

overseeing Iraq's transition to self-government.

While not rejecting outright the American plans, Annan told

Security Council members at a lunch that a U.N. mandate could

not be implemented properly under the occupation.

In comments to reporters after the lunch, Annan said the

draft U.S. resolution had not followed his recommendation of

setting up an interim Iraqi government before a constitution

was written and new elections were held.

Diplomats at the lunch said Annan had come as close as he

could to rejecting U.S. proposals that the United Nations help

with elections and the writing of a constitution.

U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said the resolution

was not "an effort on our part to hang on for as long as we

can."

Key to the transition is a new constitution. Powell said

last week he wanted to see a constitution written in six

months, though officials have stressed that is not an official

deadline.

It is down to Iraq's Governing Council to decide how to

draw up the constitution. Thursday, the U.S. administrator in

Iraq Paul Bremer said he thought six months was feasible, once

the council decided how to convene the constitutional

conference that will do the drafting.

Washington hopes a new U.N. resolution can be adopted

before a crucial donors conference in Madrid on October 23-24.

An assessment by the U.N., the World Bank and the IMF said

$35.6 billion would be needed to rebuild Iraq over four years,

in addition to $20 billion estimated by the United States.

Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan said Thursday he

wanted parliament to decide rapidly whether to send Turkish

troops to Iraq to help Washington maintain security there.

In an apparent concession to its NATO ally, the United

States earlier agreed on joint action with Turkey against

hundreds of Turkish Kurdish rebels holed up in northern Iraq,

which could include military action.