COMMENT When Zalmay Khalilzad, US ambassador to Baghdad, said earlier this week that America had "opened . . . Pandora's box" by invading Iraq, he was making almost the only realistic statement any senior US official has made about the Iraqi situation for a very long time. After three years of serial bungling that has brought Iraq to the brink of an all-out civil war that risks setting fire to the Middle East, this statement is not just rueful hindsight. It indicates that the Iraq the Bush administration has tried to transform by force of arms has reached the most dangerous moment in what was always going to be an extraordinarily risky enterprise.
After last month's bombing of the Askariya shrine in Samarra - an explosion along the faultline dividing Sunni and Shia Muslims - Iraq is sliding into a mire of sectarian war and ethnic cleansing. "We're in a civil war now," according to retired Gen William Nash, former commander in Bosnia. "It's just that not everybody's joined in." Yet.
