Iraq's Escalating Violence Defies American Optimism.

More than two years after major combat was declared over in Iraq, and three months after an historic election, the country is suffering yet another escalation in violence in a war that has endured in defiance of all U.S. predictions.

Five attacks across the country yesterday were just the latest in a dramatic increase in insurgent violence that has overshadowed the rise to power of Iraq's first elected government, the Financial Times reports. The wave of attacks, brings the total number of Iraqis killed over the past two weeks to nearly 400, and appears designed to undermine the newly announced government led by the Shiite prime minister, Ibrahim al-Jaafari. It also comes as U.S. forces continue an offensive in a desert area near the Syrian border alleged to be a main route for foreign Islamist volunteers into Iraq. That assault, now in its fifth day, has killed 110 insurgents, U.S. Marines tell the Los Angeles Times, but also has left as many as seven Americans dead. Yesterday's insurgent attacks killed at least 79 people, helping to bring to 250 the number of Iraqi soldiers, policemen and recruits who have been killed in the recent surge in violence, with another 150 of the victims civilians, the New York Times reports.

Shattering the hope kindled by the election and diminished during the long negotiations that produced a government, the eruption of violence has carried the insurgency to levels rarely seen in the 25 months since American troops seized Baghdad, and leaves the new government of Mr. Jaafari looking vulnerable only nine days after it was sworn into office, the Times says. In his most visible gesture of reassurance, Mr. Jaafari met with widows of men killed in the recent attacks, as well as a small boy whose father was shot dead in front of him by the rebels. When the boy told the prime minister, "If you don't kill the man who killed my father, just hand him to me, and I swear to God that I'll kill him," Mr. Jaafari, "seemingly struggling to hold back tears of his own, replied: 'No, I want you to help rebuild Iraq, and let justice take its course,' " the Times reports.

Back in Washington, the Bush administration has given the war less public attention of late. And the current issue of Newsweek reports the government would have a difficult time answering any question about how the conflict is going. "The various U.S. services have never managed to agree on a unified system for gauging successes and failures in the counterinsurgency campaign. Instead, everyone uses a different yardstick," the magazine says. The National Intelligence Council has issued a classified study urging "that the present Babel of war assessments be replaced with a coherent system, one that would help U.S. forces react faster and more effectively to shifting insurgent tactics and other challenges," it says. The NIC's own assessment, a person familiar with its contents tells Newsweek, is grim. But how grim is "anybody's guess."

(5-12-05, The Wall Street Journal Online.)