Mr. Speaker, one cannot doubt that the American objective in Iraq has failed. Those are not my words. They were written last week by William F. Buckley, the godfather of modern American conservatism.

In a column entitled, It Did Not Work, Mr. Buckley urges an acknowledgment of defeat in Iraq. If President Bush has lost William F. Buckley, then his Iraq policy is in a heap of trouble.

By the way, I am eager to see if Mr. Buckley is labeled a treasonous coward, as my friend and colleague Mr. Murtha was when he made similar points a few months ago.

Who could blame Mr. Buckley, or anyone else with a pulse, for that matter, at arriving at this conclusion?

While we were away for our district work period, the bombing of a Shiite shrine ignited the most gruesome carnage that Iraq has ever seen since the war began nearly 3 years ago. The Washington Post reported on its front page this morning that a staggering 1,300 people died in last week's sectarian violence.

``Hundreds of unclaimed dead lay at the morgue at midday Monday,'' The Post reported, ``blood-caked men who had been shot, knifed, garroted or apparently suffocated by the plastic bags still over their heads. Many of the bodies were sprawled with their hands still bound.''

Is this what ``freedom on the march'' looks like, Mr. Speaker?

But we should not be surprised. It is not as if no one saw this coming. Those of us who opposed the Iraq war before it even started warned that an invasion would open up a Pandora's Box of ethnic strife that we would be unable to tame, that could lead to full-blown civil war.

The administration's Iraq policy is a tragic blunder of historic proportions. I can hardly believe that we have sacrificed 2,300 Americans and spent a quarter of a trillion dollars all so Iraq could slip into chaos and lawlessness, with the political process now hanging by the flimsiest of threads.

My heart weeps for our soldiers who have been put in this impossible situation. Various news reports describe some of our troops as hanging back during last week's violence. Why? Because rather than being able to calm the uprisings, they know that their very presence is actually one of the main catalysts for the violence in the first place. No wonder a new poll shows that our servicemen and -women in Iraq believe we should leave and we should leave soon, with less than a quarter agreeing with President Bush that we should stay as long as it takes.

Here you see a complete folly that is our policy. Our preemptive occupation lit the original match that grew into this uncontainable inferno. We do not have a hose to put it out. In fact, we pour gasoline on the fire every single day, a fire that is destroying Iraq, killing our soldiers, sending them home wounded almost beyond repair. And for what reason? If we are doing more harm than good, if we are a force for resentment and divisiveness, rather than peace and stability, what are we doing there?

Mr. Speaker, it has never been clearer that it is time to bring our troops home.