I fear for America. My dread is not powered by nightmares of tumbling office buildings, or gas attacks in our subways, but by what we are doing to ourselves in response to these fears.

No matter how the military or government want to picture what’s happening in Iraq we have lost a lot in this the war. I’m more certain now than when I originally offered the dangers we faced in the opinion piece "We Will Wn This War, We Will Lose This War."

Today the Red Cross reported that they have stopped trying to keep count of the civilian casualties in Baghdad because the numbers are impossible to keep. Our military attacked two news areas injuring and killing both Arab and International journalists. One attack was against the al-Jazeera television station’s office, the second, was a thank attack on the Palestine Hotel, headquarters for many journalists, including Americans, covering the war. The American military said that both buildings were attacked because troops had come under fire from those areas. An ABS reporter who was in the hotel reported tonight that he and other journalists in the hotel heard no gun fire until the building was struck by the Americans.

As has already been reported America bombed a middle class neighborhood in an effort to kill Saddam Hussein and his sons who were thought to be meeting in a bunker under the building. Neighborhood residents said two or three families died in the attack. A USA report tells the story of an American who had to kill two 10 year old boys who were attempting to pick up a grenade launcher from where an Iraqi soldier had been shot. They boys were thought to be taking the weapon to another combat dent.

Across Iraq towns and cities are in ruble, people are looting, thousands are dead and injured. Thousands more are without food and water in an unforgiving climate. By the time we have liberated Iraq it seems highly possible that its people will have suffered more under a few weeks of war than they did under 30 years of Hussein’s sadistic rule.

Those who think that the Iraqis, and the Arab world in general, will feel better about what we’ve done anytime in the near future are going to be disappointed. America has made many new enemies and rededicated the hatred of those we already had in the Muslim world. We now live in a much more dangerous position from possible terrorists attacks than before the war. And we have fewer friends and allies who feel good about America’s role in the world.

According to the Monday's Washington Post:  "Destroying al-Jazeera's office, said Michael E. O'Hanlon, a military analyst at the Brookings Institution, could cause as much negative fallout in the Middle East as the U.S. bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade during the Kosovo air war in 1999 did in China. "The Chinese got over it in a couple of years," he said. "I'm not sure the Arabs will forgive us so fast."'

Soon we will be faced with the task of rebuilding a hostile nation. And if that weren’t difficult enough we will be working in the same neighborhood where both Syria and Iran will be doing everything they can to see we fail. Our one way out might be to allow the United Nations to take charge of the recovering mission. But our government, wanting to make sure that the new Iraq is an American friend, has already said the U.N. can play only a side role.

If the United States military indeed undertakes primary responsibility for Iraq’s reconstruction we are almost assured of years of terrorist attacks and violence which could mean the death of more young mothers and fathers in our military.

The near future, at this point, does not look good for the Iraqis or we Americans.