Iraqi forces flee police station in Western Baghdad

Bush has said that as Iraqis stand up, the US will stand down.  But the exact opposite has happened since the troop escalation began.  As US troops have stood up, Iraqis stood down.

This weekend, Iraqi forces disbanded a police station in western Baghdad.  A significant chunk of the Iraqi capital is now in complete anarchy:

Iraqi and U.S. authorities have disbanded an Iraqi police station in a tense west Baghdad neighborhood after it failed to prevent"insurgent and criminal activity" in the area, the U.S. military  announced Saturday, according to AP.

The military said the disbanding of the Khadra police stationoccurred on Wednesday when officers were given their last pay check andtold to report to the central police station for reassignment.

The announcement comes after a string of independentassessments in the United States that point to severe problems withelements of the Iraqi police.

So what is going on in western Baghdad?  According to the September 10th edition of Newsweek, Shiite militias have gained strength this summer and are driving Sunnis out of the Iraqi capital:

Thousands of other Sunnis like Kamal have been cleared out of thewestern half of Baghdad, which they once dominated, in recent months.The surge of U.S. troops—meant in part to halt the sectarian cleansingof the Iraqi capital—has hardly stemmed the problem. The number ofIraqi civilians killed in July was slightly higher than in February,when the surge began. According to the Iraqi Red Crescent, the numberof internally displaced persons (IDPs) has more than doubled to 1.1million since the beginning of the year, nearly 200,000 of those inBaghdad governorate alone.

And this puts us on the road to political reconciliation -- how?