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Commenting on fighting in Baghdad, Fallujah, Basra, Amarah, Nasiriyah and Najaf, U.S. occupation head Paul Bremer said: "If you just report on those few places, it does look chaotic." But Back-to-Iraq notes that "those few places" are home to about 77 percent of Iraqis.

A Los Angeles Times article predicts that the June 30 handoff will bring to Iraq a "Sovereignty Lite," watched over by the largest CIA station in the world.

Calling Moqtada al-Sadr Iraq's version of Lenin at the Finland Station, the American Prospect's Harold Meyerson writes that "The only unequivocally good policy option before the American people is to dump the president who got us into this mess, who had no trouble sending our young people to Iraq but who cannot steel himself to face the Sept. 11 commission alone."

In 'The New Saddam,' Justin Raimondo argues that "This entire Sadrist episode has been an American provocation from start to finish." Plus: Iraq no longer safe enough for the old Saddam?

'Deeper Into The Abyss' American Conservative contributor Christopher Layne, wonders whether any American political leader will have the courage France's Charles de Gaulle showed when he elected to cut his country's losses in Algeria and get out.

Mark Kleiman tracks GOP efforts to spin Sen. Edward Kennedy's remark that "Iraq is George Bush's Viet Nam" into a prediction of American defeat, and Helen Thomas, saying it would be a travesty if the war in Iraq does not become the focus of debate in the presidential campaign, calls on Bush and Kerry to lay out their exit strategies. Plus: Bush administration's case for war no longer has leg to stand on.