So even the close Bush family ally, James Baker, describes Iraq as "a helluva mess." Also, Baker will reportedly advise against GW's "stay the course" mantra as a solution and the former Secretary of State further sticks a finger in Junior's eye by stating, "I believe in talking to your enemies....in my view, it's not appeasement to talk to your enemies."

And then there's this item of news regarding "progress" in Iraq:

A member of a high-powered government advisory body that is developing options to prevent Iraq's chaotic collapse warns that the United States could have just weeks, not months, to avoid an all-out civil war.

"There's a sense among many people now that things in Iraq are slipping fast and there isn't a lot of time to reverse them," said Larry Diamond, one of a panel of experts advising the Iraq Study Group, which is preparing a range of policy alternatives for President Bush.

"The civil war is already well along. We have no way of knowing if it's too late until we try a radically different course," said Diamond, an expert on building democracies who is at Stanford University's Hoover Institution and is a former adviser to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq.

Will a massively erupting civil war in Iraq be the November surprise?

As it is this month is on pace to be the third deadliest since the war began. The other two months (April and November 2004) were both associated with full-scale military offensives -- not this current month, making it that much more alarming.

Yesterday, the Washington Post wrote about the dramatic rise in sectarian fighting with the two main militias breaking up into smaller groups, "In the void forged by the sectarian tensions gripping Baghdad, militias are further splintering into smaller, more radicalized cells, signifying a new and potentially more volatile phase in the struggle for the capital."

But not to worry, Dick Cheney recently said on Rush Limbaugh's show that Iraq is "doing remarkably well." Hey, if King George's #2 man says it, it must be true, right?