Also, top U.S. generals admitted in Senate testimony Thursday that only a single Iraqi battalion was prepared to operate on its own without U.S. military support. This was a stunning decrease from the three battalions that U.S. generals had assured Congress in previous testimony were ready to operate independently. The Iraqi army has more than 30 battalions with 300 to 1,000 soldiers in each of them.

Commenting on this testimony, Anthony H. Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, one of America's most respected military analysts, said, "If only one battalion has the highest level of readiness, doesn't this mean that after some two and a half years of Coalition effort, less than 1 percent of the 86,900 men in the (Iraqi) Army have the highest level of readiness?"

According to official Department of Defense figures cited by the Iraq Index Project of the Brookings Institution, in the seven days from Sept. 22 to Sept. 28, 18 U.S. soldiers were killed in Iraq and 15 of them were killed in action. That was another grim increase on the 11 U.S. troops killed in action over the previous eight days and a massive increase on the comparative lull during the first half of September.

The rate at which U.S. soldiers are being killed in Iraq, therefore, rose from only 0.5 a day from Sept. 8 through Sept. 13 to 1.375 a day from Sept. 14 to Sept. 21, and even further to more than two a day over the Sept. 22-28 period, an increase of 400 percent.

The New York Times noted Friday that the insurgents appeared to be using increasingly powerful explosives in their recent attacks. "The last week has been unusually deadly: 16 American troops have been killed, mostly in explosions caused when the vehicles they were riding in struck roadside bombs," the paper said.

By Wednesday, Sept. 28, the total U.S. military dead in Iraq from the start of major combat operations on March 19, 2003, was 1,924 of whom 1,499 were killed in action and 425 in non-hostile incidents, the IIP said.

This made the week at least as bad as the eight days of Aug. 24 to Aug. 31, when two U.S. soldiers died every day in Iraq.

The number of U.S. troops wounded in action from the beginning of hostilities on March 19, 2003, through Wednesday, Sept. 28, was 14,641, an increase of 114 over seven days. The rate at which U.S. troops were injured in Iraq by insurgent action during that period was therefore just over 16 a day, slightly down from the average rate of just over 20 a day over the previous eight day period. But it still was on par with the figures for most of August and early September.

The casualties inflicted by the insurgents on Iraqi troops and police, however, were significantly down compared with the previous week. Some 39 were killed from Sept. 22 through Sept. 28 compared with more than twice as many, 95, during the eight days from Sept. 14 through Sept. 21. This figure was close to the levels during the first 13 days of Dept. when 78 of them were killed.

The total number of Iraqi police and military killed from June 1, 2003 to Wednesday, Sept. 28 was 3,264 according to the IIP figures.

Up to Sept. 28, the overall death toll for Iraqi security forces for September was 212, the lowest for any month since April and well below the record 304 fatalities they suffered in July or the 296 in June.

But while this figure, is encouraging when taken in isolation, or when put alongside the lower U.S. wounded figure for Sept. 22-28, it needs to be seen in the context of the ferocious and all too successful insurgency terror bombing campaign being waged over the past week and a half against Shiite civilians.

That has cost hundreds of lives in only 10 days, and it has graphically demonstrated that the insurgents do not appear to have dented their capabilities at all.

The statistics on multiple fatality bombings grimly confirm this conclusion. The number of them soared in September up to 41 by Sept. 28. Even with three days of the month still to go -- and in fact there have been more and very bad bombings during that time -- this made September the worst month by far for multiple fatality bombings around Iraq since the start of the insurgency, way above the 27 such attacks recorded in August or the 26 in July.

By Sept. 28, multiple fatality bombing had killed 4,047 people and wounded another 8,803 since the start of the insurgency, the IIP said. The number of people killed by them in September up to Sept. 28 was 368, more than double the 170 killed in the also very bad month of August. And this was even before the casualties of the last three days of the month were factored into the IIP figures.

These figures clearly document an insurgency that is remorselessly spreading in area and getting worse in intensity and capabilities.

There are now 149,000 U.S. troops in Iraq. The number is being increased in preparation fro the October elections.

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