By Brian Bohl

The White House suffered through another difficult week as President Bush’s war on terror hit two more setbacks. In Iraq, ongoing sectarian violence continues to kill dozens of people every day. At a time when the Iraqis should be taking increased steps to ensure the country’s security, insurgents continue to run rampant.

The attacks have varied in their nature and gruesomeness. Car bombs and roadside explosives have caused many fatalities at police checkpoints, taking the lives of law enforcement personnel and innocent civilians. Guerrilla groups and militias have conducted lethal raids on towns. Gunmen indiscriminately hunt down members of different religious sects, once again disrupting any possibility of establishing long-term peace in the country.

In all, the new wave of violence forced government officials in Baghdad to impose an afternoon curfew for three days after a bloody back and forth between the Shi’ite majority and the Sunni minority, which caused the deaths of over 200 people from Feb. 22-27 alone.

Tensions were raised to a new level during this period, with full-scale civil war an imminent possibility. These occurrences are detrimental to Bush, who has been delivering a series of speeches and public remarks trying desperately to elicit more support from the American people for an increasingly unpopular war. Despite the pleas from the White House for more patience, Bush’s approval ratings continue to fall in the 36-44 percent range, with the 44 percent coming from (surprise!) Fox News.

More important than the president’s approval ratings is how the continued killings in Iraq will impact a planned withdrawal of U.S. troops. General John Abizaid, the head of U.S. Central Command, said he hoped that the troop level could be reduced by 100,000 soldiers from the current standing of 130,000. In the wake of these new developments, The New York Times is reporting that Defense Department officials have said they are weighing the possibilities of a smaller withdrawal and increasing the number of troops if conditions deteriorated enough to warrant more force.

Bush is beyond the point of plausibly suggesting that media pundits and negative attitudes are masking the good being done in Iraq. The current escalation of bombings cannot be glossed over by optimistic words about freedom being “on the march” or other exaggerated assessments. Accounts of Iraq being on the brink of civil war are indisputable, and the faster the White House recognizes the facts of the situation as opposed to what they wish to see, the better it will be for American service men and women.

The headaches for the Bush administration do not end in the Middle East. A court ruling in favor of the Associated Press allowed over 5,000 documents from the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay to be made public after years of classified status. Those documents contain the names and nationalities of men who were accused of having ties to the Taliban or al Qaeda. While White House and Defense Department officials claim that the status quo was in the best interest of national security, it is refreshing to see that judicial oversight will bring greater transparency to an area of government operations that too often is allowed to operate without any regard to checks and balances.

U.S. District Judge Jed S. Rakoff made his initial ruling in favor of the AP on Aug. 29. This might have been a blow for the Pentagon, but does more good for democracy. The ruling does not allow any prisoners to go free, nor does it exonerate them from any charges. Hopefully, it will force the government to bring specific charges against detainees instead of holding them indefinitely under vague accusations such as the ambiguous charge of “enemy combatant.”

Buz Eisenberg, a lawyer for a detainee, told the AP he hoped the newly-released documents could help clear his client.

“We have been trying to litigate a case without ever knowing what the allegations were that the government claimed justified his continued detention,” he said.

If the detained prisoners are a serious threat to the security of peace, then filing specific charges should pose no problem for the U.S. government. Over the past two months, Bush has defended his domestic wiretapping program by saying the National Security Agency is only monitoring people who are having conversations with “known terrorists.” It stands to reason that if the U.S. intelligence community can confirm who is a terrorist, they can also easily prove illegal actions of detainees instead of relying on sweeping powers of arrest to hold people for long durations with little, if any, tangible proof.

As the bastion of freedom and civil liberties, the United States should ensure that people are only imprisoned after there is hard, substantial evidence. Bush has asked the American people to take him on faith when it comes to Iraq and the treatment of prisoners. But the evidence provided by multiple, credible sources all point to the same conclusion. The White House needs oversight both from the judicial branch and from the people.