I’ve had precious few words to say on Iraq lately. Not because I have nothing to say, but because words fail on a country so utterly and completely lost. I don’t think in the worst nightmares of anti-war hopefuls who wanted a failed Iraq to prove George Bush’s war was morally repugnant, did they expect this kind of bloodbath. To note that, on an average day, over one hundred Iraqi’s are dying, is beyond the word “appalling”. I am so disturbed by events in Iraq that I would rather have a Bush vision of Democracy through force than this dystopian nightmare of sectarian genocide.

American troops have been relegated now to little more than cleanup crews as Sunni and Shia attacks are leaving mangled corpses that are overflowing in the mortuaries. The so-called Democratic government of Iraq is very nearly toppled, completely ineffective, and entirely impotent to do anything short of watch American soldiers watch Iraqi’s murder each other.

After organized attacks on Sunni mosques on Friday, reprisals in the form of attacks on Shi’ite civilians in Diyala province saw 21 men murdered in front of their family. The violence in Baghdad has completely shut down the airport, and forced the cancellation of President Jalal Talibani to a trip to Iran to ask for assistance in quelling Shi’ite sectarian uprisings.

Meanwhile, more than 200 people were killed in the Moqtada al-Sadr slum of Baghdad on Thursday by Sunni insurgents. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is depending on a pathetically fragile coalition which includes al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army. But the cleric is blaming the U.S. for all the violence, and warned to withdraw from the coalition if he meets President George Bush in Jordan on Thursday.

Iran may see the flailing American forces, the sentiment at home in the U.S., and the sectarian violence as their cue to devastate the U.S. by launching their own support for Shi’ite militants. If the U.S. withdraw from Iraq in the state it is in, Iran could easily usurp power as the preeminent force in the Middle East, with weaponry piling in from Russia.

Shi’ite militia have launched some of the most brutal attacks in the Iraq war. On Friday they kidnapped six Sunni’s praying and burned them alive with gasoline. They threw hand grenades into houses and shops as they drove by. The rise in violence cannot be stopped even with condemnation from powerful imams, Ayatollahs, and government and spiritual leaders.

Beleaguered Vice-President Dick Cheney is in Saudi Arabia to to rally support from regional countries that want no part of the chaos. It seems that the U.S. may eventually have to grovel into a compromise with two members of the region they classified as terrorist states: Syria and Iran. If the U.S. can broker a peace deal by utilizing Syria and Iran, it could cement the reputation of the U.S. as a fallen superpower, and mark the emergence of Iran as a new one.