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Blasting Bush’s double standard on the sovereign use of force to combat terrorism, Erdogan has announced troop "contingency plans" to storm over the border. The U.S. has been warning Turkey to restrain itself, but the alliance between the two nations is in shambles. Three years ago, former Defense Deputy Secretary Paul Wolfowitz chided Turkey when its parliament refused to allow the U.S. to use its country as a transit point for the Iraq invasion, and even suggested that the military should have pressured the government into complying with U.S. edicts. Adding double insult to injury, he pledged to root the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) out of northern Iraq, but instead directed the U.S. to bolster the autonomy of the Kurdish region. Defense Secretary Rumsfeld last year, in one of his more risible statements, blamed the Iraqi insurgency on Turkey.

Denied a homeland in the 1923 carve-up of the Ottoman Empire, Kurds are one of the largest ethnic groups in the world to be stateless. Turkey’s founding father Mustafa Kemal Atatürk prohibited the outward signs of Kurdish culture from his newly formed democratic state, banning Kurdish schools, music, dress, and language. To this date, overt support for Kurdish causes is criminalized. The two factions reached a fragile truce after the capture of Abdullah Ocalan (head of the PKK) in 1999, but over the past two years Kurdish groups have claimed responsibility for bombings in Istanbul, resort towns, and elsewhere. Turkey’s biggest nightmare is a growing separatist movement for an autonomous Kurdish state.

Complicating this matter is Iranian activity against the Kurds. Iran has supposedly shelled some Kurdish enclaves in Iraq making it a complicit partner with Turkey in Kurdish eradication.

The ramifications of Turkey waging war against the PKK in Iraq amid the chaos of so many armed soldiers could certainly lead to confrontation and skirmishes between U.S. and Turkish forces, similar to what happened in Sulaymaniyah in 2003. The Turkish army is no ragtag outfit, having forcibly ousted four governments in the last 45 years. The scenario of pitting two supposed democratic allies, both members of NATO, against each other was already laid out in the Anatolian best-selling book Metal Storm, in which Turkey, allied with its former nemesis Russia, ended up detonating a nuclear suitcase bomb in Washington, D.C.

When Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul visited Washington earlier this month, he met with Condoleezza Rice in a canned TV appearance to announce a " shared vision document." The president was too busy to meet with him. Apparently, a country that’s 98 percent Muslim but officially a secular democratic republic since 1923 and shares borders with Iraq, Iran, Syria, Armenia, and Georgia doesn’t merit his attention. And let’s not forget that it hosts oil pipelines that skirt beyond Russian territories and terminate at the Mediterranean – one pumping from the Caspian port of Baku, the other from Kirkuk.

On Saturday, the White House announced Bush had phoned Erdogan and promised more concrete help in some sort of tripartite alliance of U.S., Iraqi, and Turkish forces in dealing with the PKK. How Kurdish civilians get spared in this venture is anybody’s guess. Unfortunately, the Bush administration may be unaware that Turkey views the whole Kurdish population as a terrorist nest.

Thirty thousand dead have seemingly failed to satisfy the blood lust between Turks and Kurds. The Turks proved their ferocity in World War I when they repelled the Allies at Gallipoli, a battle that resulted in 250,000 dead. Armed with the Bush doctrine of taking the fight to the enemy, Turkey, by adding a new staging area to the conflict, could be pouring an inextinguishable accelerant upon the region.

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First, last week, David Twersky, the Tel Aviv correspondent for the New York Sun, a mouthpiece for the Israeli hardliners, compared the kidnapping of a corporal in Gaza to the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo, the incident that triggered World War I.

The parallel was planted.

Then, just yesterday Sunday June 16, Newt Gingrich, former House Speaker and still a darling of the GOP right, stated as a matter of fact on Meet that Press that a new war is already underway in the Middle East. It is, he insists, already a world war. “THIS IS, IN FACT, WORLD WAR 3,” he said for emphasis, with no regrets and an apparent longing to “bring it on.”

Columnist Dave Postman elaborated on his message in his Seattle Times blog:

"Former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich says America is in World War III and President Bush should say so. In an interview in Bellevue this morning Gingrich said Bush should call a joint session of Congress the first week of September and talk about global military conflicts in much starker terms than have been heard from the president.

"We need to have the militancy that says ‘We’re not going to lose a city,’" Gingrich said. He talks about the need to recognize World War III as important for military strategy and political strategy.

“Gingrich said he is "very worried" about Republicans facing fall elections and says the party must have the "nerve" to nationalize the elections and make the 2006 campaigns about a liberal Democratic agenda rather than about President Bush’s record.”

Hmmm…, a world war to save the Bush Administration? How convenient.

But there is more. The always aggressive and often obnoxious Prince of Darkness, Richard Perle, a leading booster of war on Iraq, is now lobbying the Administration to finish off the “axis of evil.” In print pieces and TV appearances, he is calling for a wider war now.

Hold on. Also on Meet The Press, Martin Fletcher, the NBC veteran Israel correspondent revealed that the Israeli war plan that is now being carried out is not simply a response to current risks or attacks, and that it has been FIVE years in the making. It was a plan just looking for a pretext.

“I think they will never say that publicly,” he added, explaining that this war plan was not made by the current Israeli government but Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s Kadima Party mate Ariel Sharon & Sharon’s generals. Fletcher says Tel Aviv calls it a “work plan.” He says it is being implemented “step by step.”

He added, “It will go on until someone steps in and stops them.”

The United States is not currently that “someone”­not now. President Bush is backing Israel although with an unheard PR appeal asking that they be gentler in their attacks. He, like, Israel, is blaming Hezbollah which insists it is acting defensively and reactively, not offensively.

Retired U.S. Air Force Colonel Sam Gardiner, who appears in my film WMD (Weapons of Mass Deception) has been running war games Vis a Vis Iran. He wrote to me on the weekend after talking to Pentagon insiders. His conclusion: “It would be hard to overestimate the danger of a major war,” he says. They say the Israeli soldiers they captured were fighting illegally in Lebanon.

He says be believes the US and Israel are coordinating their strategies. While he believes that Iran is orchestrating Hamas and Hezbollah through Syria, he also says: “That does not mean that Israel is not taking advantage of the events. They have decided on regime change in Gaza and on punishing Hezbollah while establishing a buffer zone to prevent rocket attacks. As closely as the US and Israel have been coordinating, one has to assume coordination.”

Former Israeli independence fighter and now peace activist Uri Avnery goes further: ”As in 1982, the present operation, too, was planned and is being carried out in full coordination with the US. As then, there is no doubt that it is coordinated with a part of the Lebanese elite.”

And who wants this war? The Toronto Star’s Linda McQuaig challenges the dominant view in DC that it is only the Iranians.

“Is it really Iran that is pushing for war? Think about it. Why would Iran want to provoke a war with Israel and the U.S. ­ both heavily armed nuclear powers ­ when it has no nuclear weapons itself?”

Summer is often called the silly season. While the Bush Administration is losing one war in Iraq, and another with public opinion here at home, it seems to be opting for more conflicts as its backers bang the drum for a new world war.

Years ago, Che Guevara called for “1, 2, 3” Vietnams. The Busheviks today may be moving toward ‘1, 2, 3’ world wars.

Sound crazy? In our Orwellian political climate, a new generation of Dr Strangelove’s are in command. Only this time, they don’t act like loonies. They have mastered the art of the TV interview and can, with selective facts and ideology packaged as information, make insanity sound oh so sane.

They have convinced themselves, and now want to convince us, to join a new hegemonic adventure to expand their failed “GWOT,” (Global War on Terror), whatever the cost.

And where is the media in all this, to rein them in, to connect the dots, to offer the missing context and background, to make vital distinctions between the aggressor and those agressed upon, and to stand up for international law, human rights, and sanity? NBC is giving the Gingrichs and Pearls of the world a platform to advocate more killing with no one to challenge them effectively.

We need more critics like Cenk Uygur, who challenges William Kristol on Huffington Post in these terms:

“Bill Kristol has never seen a war he didn’t like. No, that’s too soft. A war he didn’t love and lust after. Here’s a wolf in sheep’s clothing pretending to be serious, sober minded analyst on television when in reality he is trying to get us sucked into horrific wars that other people will die fighting.”

Why didn’t Tim Russert have the guts to say something similar to Newt Gingrich?

Has mainstream media devolved so far that a world war is now considered a legitimate subject to advocate? Doesn’t this new “mission” add up to more madness?

Has it come to this? Is the summer heat corroding our senses? Is global warming melting our brains?

Danny Schechter is “blogger in chief” of www.Mediachannel.org   His latest film seeking distribution is In Debt We Trust. ( www.Indebtwetrust.com   ) Comments to dissector@mediachannel.org

Ever since the invasion in 2003 the US military and later US-supported Iraqi governments have sought to conceal the number of Iraqi civilians being killed. The US Army for long denied that it counted the number of civilians killed by its soldiers. The Iraqi Ministry of Health also refused to reveal to the UN the civilian casualty figures.

Now, for the first time, the health ministry in Baghdad has told the UN Assistance Mission for Iraq, which publishes a bimonthly report on human rights, the exact death toll recorded by hospitals around the country. The central morgue in Baghdad provides figures for unidentified bodies, of which there were 1,595 in June. In the first six months of the year the number of Iraqi civilians dying violently rose by 77 per cent.

The UN report paints a picture of Iraqi society dissolving under the stress of cumulative violence. Nobody is safe. A tennis coach and two players were shot dead in Baghdad for wearing shorts. Militias threaten the families of homosexuals "stating they will begin killing family members unless men are handed over or killed by the family". Sectarian differences are behind most killings. Assassinations are often carried out by the security forces themselves. On  June 3, for instance, 50 police cars surrounded the al-Arab mosque in Basra and killed 10 of the 20 people inside. Sunni suicide bombers attack crowded Shia mosques and markets in order to cause maximum casualties.

Kidnapping, often of children, is common and the victims are frequently killed regardless of whether or not they have paid a ransom. "In one case the body of 12-year-old Osama was reportedly found by the Iraqi police in a plastic bag after his family paid a ransom of $30,000 [£16,300]. The boy had been sexually assaulted by the kidnappers, before being hanged by his own clothing. The police captured members of this gang who confessed to raping and killing many boys and girls before Osama."

Many Iraqis have fled the country, mostly to Jordan and Syria, to avoid the violence. Syria now has 351,000 and Jordan 450,000 of these refugees, including 40 per cent of all Iraqi professionals, according to the US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants. It is increasingly difficult to get into Jordan from Iraq but Syria still issues visas easily.

All of the 18 Iraqi provinces are dangerous, outside the three Kurdish provinces. The health ministry revealed for the first time in June that 50,000 Iraqis have been killed violently since 2003, but added that this was probably an under-estimate. Medical care for the wounded is declining because so many doctors have left the country. The ministry says 106 doctors and 164 nurses have been killed.

Doctors in Baghdad hospitals complain that even the operating theatres are not safe because soldiers or militiamen will order them to stop an operation half way through.

Parents dare not let their children wander the dangerous streets of Baghdad alone, but until a few days ago they could give them a treat by taking them to al-Jillawi’s toyshop, the biggest and best in the city, its windows invitingly filled with Playstations, Barbie dolls and bicycles.

They go there no longer. Today the shop on 14 Ramadan Street in the once-affluent al-Mansur district is closed, with a black mourning flag draped across its front. The three sons and the teenage grandson of the owner, Mehdi al-Jillawi, were shutting down for the evening recently, bringing in bicycles and tricycles on display on the pavement in front of the shop. As they did so, two BMWs stopped close to them, and several gunmen got out armed with assault rifles. They opened fire at point-blank range, killing the young men.

Sectarian slaughter is not the only way to die in Iraq.

Yesterday US troops killed five people, including two women and a child, in the city of Baquba during a raid, claiming they had been shot at. At best it was a tragic error, at worst it spoke to the cavalier attitude of the US towards Iraqi civilian lives. Local police said that a man had fired from a rooftop at the Americans because he thought a hostile militia force was approaching.

While the eyes of the world are elsewhere, Baghdad is still dying and the daily toll is hitting record levels. While the plumes of fire and smoke over Lebanon have dominated headlines for 11 days, with Britain and the US opposing a UN call for an immediate ceasefire, another Bush-Blair foreign policy disaster is unfolding in Iraq.

In a desperate effort to stem the butchery, the government yesterday imposed an all-day curfew on Baghdad, but tens of thousands of its people have already run for their lives. In some parts of the city, dead bodies are left to rot in the baking summer heat because nobody dares to remove them. I drove through empty streets in the heart of the city yesterday, taking a zigzag course to avoid police checkpoints that we thought might be doubling as death squads. Few shops were open. Those still doing business are frantically trying to sell their stock. A sign above one shop read: "Italian furniture: 75 per cent reductions.”

Iraqis are terrified in a way that I have never seen before, since I first visited Baghdad in 1978. Sectarian massacres happen almost daily. The UN says 6,000 civilians were slaughtered in May and June, but this month has been far worse. In many districts it has become difficult to buy bread because Sunni assassins have killed all the bakers who are traditionally Shia.

Baghdad is now breaking up into a dozen different hostile cities, Sunni or Shia, heavily armed and living in terror of the other side. On July 9, Shia gunmen from the black-clad Mehdi Army entered the largely Sunni al-Jihad district in west Baghdad and killed 40 Sunni after dragging them from their cars or stopping them at false checkpoints. Within hours the Sunni militias struck back with car bombs killing more than 60 Shia.

The Iraqi government is a prisoner of the Green Zone, the heavily fortified enclave defended by US troops in the centre of Baghdad. Entering it is like visiting another country. Soldiers at the gates spend longer looking at documents than do officials at most European frontiers. "Some ministers have never visited their ministries outside the Green Zone," said one ex-minister. "They have their officials bring them documents to sign."

It seems unlikely that Baghdad will ever come together again. Sunni are frightened of being caught in a Shia district, and vice versa. Many now carry two sets of identity documents, one Sunni and one Shia. Checkpoints manned by the Mehdi Army know this and sometimes ask people claiming to be Shia questions about Shia theology. One Shia who passed this test was still killed because he was driving a car with number plates from Anbar, a Sunni province.

Where are the Americans in all this? Iraqis who used to say that they were against the US occupation but at least the Americans prevented civil war now think that a civil war has started regardless of their presence.

The Iraqi army and police are themselves divided along sectarian lines. Recognizing this, the Shia-controlled Interior Ministry ludicrously suggested that people challenge the ferocious police commanders and demand their identity cards in order to distinguish real police from death squads. It is hard to think of a surer way of getting oneself killed.

I never expected the occupation of Iraq by the US and Britain to end happily. But I did not foresee the present catastrophe. Baghdad has survived the Iran-Iraq war, the 1991 Gulf War, UN sanctions, more bombing and, finally, a savage guerrilla war. Now the city is finally splitting apart, and – most surprising of all – this disaster scarcely gets a mention on the news as the world watches the destruction of Beirut.

A report from the British Sustainable Development Commission identifies existing houses as the primary target for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The report points out that in fifty years 75% of housing will consist of homes already built. Making these existing homes as efficient as possible is an important component of arresting climate change.

"You cannot possibly deliver a 60% reduction in carbon emissions by doing nothing to the existing housing stock," said Professor Anne Power, a member of the SDC and one of the report’s authors.

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