"The violence is, indeed, disheartening," Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV told reporters last week. "In Baghdad alone, we've seen a 22 percent increase in attacks during the first three weeks of Ramadan," the military spokesman said.

So much for Operation Together Forward II, for which 12,000 additional U.S. troops were pulled into Baghdad from outlying cities three months ago in an attempt to clean out and pacify neighborhoods of insurgents so that Iraqi forces could take over. That effort, Caldwell said with classic military understatement, "has not met our overall expectations of sustaining a reduction in the levels of violence."

One day later, fighters from competing Shiite militias killed dozens, wounded nearly 200 and terrified thousands on the streets of Amarah, a city more than 200 miles south of Baghdad, from which British troops withdrew in August. It was the Badr Organization of Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim versus the Mahdi Army of Moqtada al-Sadr, both of whom control substantial blocs of seats in the Iraqi parliament.

As of Monday, the fighting continued fitfully. According to the Associated Press, the Mahdi Army killed four Amarah policemen, and the Badr group seized and beheaded the brother of a Mahdi commander.

Over the last week, violence — bombings, gun battles, sniper shootings, kidnappings, torture and executions — erupted in Baghdad, Amarah, Ramadi, Mosul, Diyala, Suwayra, Kirkuk and Mahmoudiyah, among other places. Some counts put the number of armed non-government militias at close to two dozen.

Iraq rages on. It's called civil war.

The Bush administration insists that its Iraq strategy remains sound, but it seems unable to distinguish between a goal and a strategy.

Turning Iraq into a stable West-leaning democracy is not a strategy; it's a goal. Ink-stained Iraqis have voted proudly in three democratic elections since the fall of Saddam, but violent instability still reigns.

Victory against a hydra-headed insurgency is not a strategy; it's a goal. Nixon-like, the Bush White House has declared the phrase "staying the course" to be inoperative, but it remains the best description of the administration's basic strategy. American troops standing down as Iraqi forces stand up is a benchmark of the progress of that strategy. Gen. Caldwell's candid comments last week indicate it's not working.

So now here we are, two weeks before a midterm election that threatens the Republican chokehold on Washington power, and suddenly the Bush administration is talking tough to the hapless government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, drawing up timetables for specific accomplishments and possible penalties for failing to keep to the schedule.

Two weeks before the election, and the Bush-appointed Iraq Study Group headed by longtime Bush family fixer James Baker and former Indiana congressman Lee Hamilton is promising a report with fresh ideas and options — but not until after the election. Apparently, we're supposed to hold on and ... believe.

Believe in what? More than three and a half years into the Iraq war, nothing the Bush administration has said about it has proved accurate, and nothing it has done since deposing Saddam has worked the way we were told it would. Even if their bumbling has been in good faith, why should we believe that these incompetents have their fingers on the pulse of a successful Iraq strategy? A better question is whether the strategy has a pulse at all.

And the grim tallies tick on.

October has been a cruel month. The methodical Web site icasualties.org counted 90 U.S troops killed as of Tuesday, pushing the war total to more than 2,800. The number of Americans wounded is climbing close to 45,000.

Earlier this month, a statistical analysis by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health estimated the number of civilian deaths in Iraq since March 2003 at more than 600,000. The administration blithely dismissed the report, and its methods were questioned by conservative pollsters who worked for the U.S. provisional authority in Iraq. The report appeared, however, in The Lancet, a respected medical journal that subjects articles to peer review before accepting them for publication.

These are not numbers in any case; they are men and women. They are sons and daughters, fathers and mothers. These non-numbers have parents, brothers and sisters. They have circles of friends, fiancees, lovers, schoolmates, co-workers, colleagues — and fellow brothers and sisters in arms.

Local newspapers and television stations take note of the fallen of their respective communities, honor their service, pay respect to their passing. But in the absence of personal knowledge or a personal connection, it is difficult for most of us to sense what this war is, what it does to those who fight and how its effects ripple out through the circles of people that surround us all.

"Flags of our Fathers," a new fact-based movie about people involved in World War II's Battle of Iwo Jima, clarifies things; its battle scenes are as horrific and uncompromising as any ever put on film.

But the heart of the movie, directed by Clint Eastwood and based on the non-fiction book of the same title, lies in its depiction of the effects of war on the fighters who survive, on the families of the dead and the families of the living and even on the government whose leaders direct it.

The film reminds us that, however noble the cause, war is ugly, brutal and unforgiving. It begs us to send fellow human beings into such a reality on our behalf only if absolutely necessary and, even then, only with the greatest reluctance.

It was so in World War II. No such claim can be made for the deteriorating war in Iraq, which is every bit as ugly, brutal and unforgiving.

Eric Mink is commentary editor for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.