The Turkish army may move into northern Iraq if violence by Turkish-Kurdish guerrillas continues, officials said yesterday.

Such a move could put Turkey on a collision course with the United States, which has repeatedly warned against unilateral action in Iraq. ...

Any operation is unlikely to take place before the end of August, when the current military chief of staff will be replaced by an officer widely regarded as a hardliner.

The plans range from limited artillery and air strikes on guerrilla bases to attacks by commando forces or a broader ground offensive. (my emphasis)

The oft-stated hope that a new Iraqi government would swiftly transform the region's fractured politics has been realized with unintended consequences: an emboldened Iran; the victory of Hamas in Palestinian elections; and Syria's departure from Lebanon. The familiar strain has been hatred between the Arabs and Israelis and a widely held assumption that the situation will grow worse before it improves.

"Unless and until you solve the Arab-Israel conflict, you are going to have instability in the region," said Steven Cook, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.

With tacit support from the US, Israel has operated with a relatively free hand, leaving hundreds of Lebanese civilians dead. But that window of opportunity will close as the US ramps up cease-fire efforts and as images of ruin in Lebanon begin to dominate the international agenda.

"The clock is ticking, and the objective is to weaken Hizbullah to the greatest extent possible," says Yossi Alpher, the editor of the online Middle East affairs journal Bitterlemons.org.

"When the images on television of the bombing of Beirut, of Lebanese victims of destruction, and of infrastructure reaches a point where it pressures the US, [British Prime Minister] Tony Blair, and European leaders, then the process of winding down will begin. The pressure is starting now," he says.

As Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni held talks with European envoy Javier Solana, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is poised to visit the region in the next week. Israeli observers speculate that gives the military only a matter of several more days to operate.

Many members of Iraq's political class spoke gravely of the massacres and bombings of the last few days, even as two U.S. Cabinet officials visiting Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone this week touted Iraq as a potential bonanza for private investors.

The Iraqi Islamic Party, the largest Sunni Arab political group, warned Tuesday that "Iraq is witnessing a grave escalation in violence," and it called on Iraqis "to return to their senses instead of slipping into the abyss."

The surge in violence has terrified residents of Baghdad and other mixed Sunni and Shiite areas. The Baghdad airport has been flooded with Iraqis of modest means seeking to escape even temporarily the country's upswing in sectarian slayings. ...

Even those who hesitate to call Iraq's sectarian violence a civil war have begun saying that defusing the situation will require the international mechanisms used to mediate previous ethnic, religious and political conflicts in Central America, the former Yugoslavia and Sri Lanka.

"I start to feel the need to say that there is a civil war," said Salim Abdullah Jabouri, a Sunni politician, "in order to borrow the tools and solutions of past civil wars to apply them here, and to call upon the international community to deal with Iraq's problems on this basis."

I believe demolishing Hussein's military power and liberating Iraq would be a cakewalk. Let me give simple, responsible reasons: (1) It was a cakewalk last time; (2) they've become much weaker; (3) we've become much stronger; and (4) now we're playing for keeps.

Defense Minister Amir Peretz said on Tuesday, during a meeting with senior IDF officers, that attacks against Hezbollah would continue "without letup and time limit."

A senior military source said on Tuesday that Israel seeks "to significantly weaken Hezbollah but not crush it." He said that "it is impossible to crush a popular, religious movement."

The source added that had the government of Israel reacted differently to the abduction of three soldiers in an attack on Har Dov in October 2000 and behaved as Israel is doing now, it is likely that the attack last Wednesday could have been prevented.

The virtue of the war in the North, against a relatively small and weak enemy, is that all the fire and smoke will be ended with an agreement. But the achievement in Lebanon is liable to provide a basis for the illusion that our might could well lead to an agreement with the Palestinians as well. There, the Israel Air Force and the smart bombs - or so they seem - will never suffice. There, instead of getting drunk on being just (to its mind), Israel will have to be, for a change, smart and broad-minded as well.

The security cabinet met Wednesday morning and issued a statement afterward that "the intensive fighting against Hizbullah will continue, including attacks on Hizbullah infrastructure and command posts, its operational abilities, its armaments, and the leadership of the organization."

The statement reiterated that the goals of the operation were to return the kidnapped soldiers, to stop the rocket attacks on Israeli communities, and to "remove the threat."

Regarding the possible diplomatic solutions to the crisis, the security cabinet set three conditions: the unconditional return of the captured soldiers, an end to the rocket fire on Israel, and the complete implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 1559, which includes the complete dismantling of the armed militia in Lebanon, the extension of Lebanese sovereignty throughout the country, and deployment of the Lebanese army along the border with Israel.

Watching the President of the United States try to fulfill his responsibilities at an international summit is a sobering experience these days. To observe George W. Bush talking trash, chewing with his mouth open and demonstrating his ignorance of geography marks still another step down in the continuing decline of U.S. prestige. It's the diplomatic equivalent of flag burning.

While Mr. Bush's little misadventures make headlines, what they symbolize is a collapse of policy and a vacuum of competence that are far more troubling than mere cloddishness. Preoccupied from the beginning of his presidency with Iraq, alienated from our traditional allies and the United Nations and neglectful of broader American interests in the Middle East, he and his team now confront a sudden crisis for which they seem woefully unprepared. ...

Recall that when the Bush administration decided to invade Iraq-on the pretext of disarming Saddam Hussein-a new era of peace and democracy was supposed to dawn. Making an example of the toppled Saddam would, according to neoconservative theory, persuade other despots in the region to reform and reconcile themselves to co-existence with Israel, and stimulate the “peace process” too. (That same theory, of course, similarly predicted flower-strewn parades in Baghdad and enough oil revenues to finance the whole bloody enterprise.)

Indeed, when the weapons of mass destruction didn't turn up, those anticipated dividends became the retrospective justification for the war. ...

Their marvelous theory lies in gory ruins, but the neoconservatives are again banging the drums with as much gusto as if they had been vindicated. The missile barrages between Israel and Lebanon are actually the harbinger of World War III, they burble, and frankly they can't wait for World War IV. Things haven't worked out in Iraq, but why not take this opportunity to hit Iran and Syria?

Let us hope that Mr. Bush resists this mad counsel. While his performance so far has been dismal, especially in his reluctance to endorse an immediate ceasefire, at least he isn't promoting a wider war. Yet while he dithers, the killing and destruction continue-which is exactly what Hezbollah and Hamas want.

What is truly "ironic," however, is that the Bush administration, having overstretched our military and generated no foreign policy ideas beyond the willy-nilly "projection" of military force, has become a helpless bystander as the entire region threatens to burn.

Responding to Bush, Blair at least sounded somewhat constructive, offering to go directly to the Mideast and pave the way for a visit by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. In this, he seemed to be unwittingly aligned with former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who expressed on Sunday frustration with her successor for not leaving the conference to engage in emergency shuttle diplomacy in the Mideast.

Where Albright was critical of the "disaster" in Iraq for distracting from the dormant Mideast peace process, Rice was shrilly defensive.

"For the last 60 years, American administrations of both stripe - Democrat, Republican - traded what they thought was security and stability and turned a blind eye to the absence of democratic forces, to the absence of pluralism in the region," she said Sunday. "That policy has changed."