One of the nice things about going on vacation for a week is coming back to find that there have been dramatic changes in the world--especially if the news is for the better. No such luck for me.

I left Aug. 1, with the U.S. at war in Iraq, with Bush hyping his "War on Terror" and with Kerry trying to act like Bush. I came back Aug. 7 to find Bush hyping terror even harder than ever with the national alert upped to orange, probably for the rest of the campaign, with Kerry still trying to out-Bush Bush, and with the U.S. army still at war in Iraq, only more so.

Since the Orange Alert is clearly bogus and just another effort to get Americans all in a tizzy in time for the Republican National Convention, the big news has to be that once again the Mahdi Army and its leader, Moktada al-Sadr, have demonstrated that the American occupation of Iraq is a failure waiting to be recognized.

Arrayed against the most powerful military machine the world has ever known, al-Sadr's untrained fighters, with their hand weapons, have held their ground, forcing the U.S. to resort to bombs and heavy weapons to maintain any control at all in Najaf. Other cities in Iraq--as many as five, not counting Fallujah, which is controlled by Sunni fighters--and a large section of Baghdad itself, are totally controlled by Shite militiamen and are simply off limits to American soldiers, and to the puppet army being set up by American forces to take the bullets in battles with insurgents.

As usual, the U.S. is boasting that it is causing massive casualties among the enemy--over 300 at last count--with only a couple of U.S. soldiers getting killed. But with al-Sadr claiming to have lost only 40 of his fighters, it's a safe bet that as has often been proven to be the case later on, many of those 300 casualties claimed by the U.S. will probably turn out to have been innocent civilians caught in the wrong place at the wrong time.

What such fighting demonstrates is that the U.S. cannot win this battle. If the occupation army fights with everything it's got, it will kill many, many innocents and arouse the hostility of the entire country. If it doesn't fight with heavy weapons, gunships and air strikes, the only options are heavy U.S. casualties (a political disaster for President Bush) or surrender of more urban areas to the insurgents, both Sunni and Shite.

This will all change after November 2. If Bush wins the election, it is almost a certainty that he will have the U.S. military switch to option 1, attacking rebel-held areas with the whole might of the U.S. arsenal. Not that this would work. The only losers would be the Iraqi people.

What Kerry would do if he found himself taking over the Iraq mess in January is less clear, as he has so far hidden behind a Nixon-like “secret plan” for Iraq. If he were smart, he’d declare victory and pull all U.S. troops out. Sadly, Kerry may well opt for the same futile approach as Bush, unloading on Iraqi cities that show any resistance, though given his demonstrable record of trying to split the difference on virtually every issue of substance, he could well opt for the other losing strategy of pulling U.S. troops back into well-defended base areas, essentially surrendering most of the country to the insurgency and leaving the U.S. mired in a messy civil war for years to come.