It's said that a picture is worth is a thousand words. Is this chart worth 2,817 American deaths? Is that clinical image of a nation sliding towards chaos worth 44,779 wounded? Is it worth the tens of thousands of slain Iraqis?

American voters don't think so. The NIE and this chart demonstrate that the administration is well aware that Iraq is a "failed state", that "ethnic cleaning" is taking place, and that a stay-the-course policy has failed to stop the stop the steady march towards chaos.

And for all the talk of "changing tactics," for all spin-filled pages of the President's "National Strategy for Victory in Iraq", the President has no plan, and his party has refused to demand one from him.

Our leaders do not act because their reputations are at stake. The public does not force them to act because it is blinded by the president's conjured set of illusions: that we are reducing terrorism by fighting in Iraq; creating democracy there; preventing the spread of nuclear weapons; making Israel more secure; not allowing our fallen soldiers to have died in vain; and others.

But reality can no longer be avoided. It is beyond U.S. power to prevent bloody sectarian violence in Iraq, the growing influence of Iran throughout the region, the probable spread of Sunni-Shiite strife to neighboring Arab states, the eventual rise to power of the anti-American cleric Muqtada Sadr or some other anti-American leader in Baghdad, and the spread of instability beyond Iraq. All of these things and more became unavoidable the day that U.S. forces invaded.

These realities get worse every day that our forces remain in Iraq. They can't be wished away by clever diplomacy or by leaving our forces in Iraq for several more years.