The political damage already suffered may be irreparable.

As we have noted in previous columns, Gen. David Petraeus' strategy of concentrating U.S. forces in the Iraqi capital of Baghdad to build ever-growing "islands" or "spreading ink blots" of security there has in fact been paying real dividends in dramatically slashing the death toll caused by sectarian killings carried out by Iraq's many militias.

However, the Sunni insurgents have responded to this progress by switching their tactics. They are now focusing on carrying out fewer, but larger truck bomb, car bomb and suicide bomber attacks against "soft" targets, trying to kill as many primarily Shiite civilians as possible both in Baghdad and out in the provinces, as well as targeting Kurdish centers.

Unfortunately, this tactic appears to be paying off. Claims of increased security in the capital, even though reflecting real progress, have a hollow ring to them when dozens or scores of people at a time can still be massacred in one, or simultaneous densely populated civilian targets. This is especially the case when multiple attacks causing heavy casualties can still be carried out in Baghdad itself, as happened on Saturday.

On that day, six cars, minibuses and roadside bombs, or improvised explosive devices, exploded in the Iraqi capital of 6 million people, killing at least 45 people. All the attacks were targeted in Shiite Muslim areas of the city.

Also on Saturday, another car bomb attack in the holy city of Karbala killed 42 people and wounded 224 more.

On Sunday, the tempo of violence continued unabated. At least 18 more people were killed in a double car bomb attack in a suburban shopping district of Baghdad in the south of the city. The dead included women and children.

U.S. forces retain their high levels of operational competence, and even excellence, and have been making real inroads into some bomb-making cells. But they lack anything like sufficient human intelligence to penetrate the Sunni insurgent structures that organize these attacks.

Two to three years after U.S. forces en masse entered the Vietnam War the CIA's Phoenix program had made major inroads in devastating the Viet Cong's terror infrastructure within the cities of South Vietnam. So far, U.S. intelligence and military forces appear nowhere near a comparable level of penetration and attrition of the Sunni insurgent structures in Iraq.

The state of the Iraqi security forces, as American analysts such as Anthony H. Cordesman at Washington's Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank, have pointed out, are still far behind the reliability and operational competence of the Army of the Republic of South Vietnam 40 years ago.

On Monday, the fragile Iraqi government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki was dealt another severe blow when Moqtada Sadr, charismatic leader of the Mahdi Army militia, announced that he was withdrawing the support of his political allies in the Iraqi parliament.

As we have repeatedly noted in these columns, the entire government structure in Iraq lacks widespread credibility and even in the majority Shiite community that comprises 60 percent of Iraq's 28 million people. Support for it is lukewarm and passive rather than deep and passionate. Real power among Iraq's more than 16 million Shiites remains concentrated in the hands of the leading Shiite militias, including the Mahdi Army, rather than in the government and the security forces it directly controls.

There is yet another paradox to the current American strategy in Baghdad. If U.S. forces are focused on building and maintaining islands of security, then going after the "bad guys" -- the insurgents who are targeting Shiite civilians -- falls lower in the hierarchy of priorities.

If the Iraqi security forces were effective in maintaining security across the capital, as the British Army was largely able to do against the Irish Republican Army in Northern Ireland from 1980 onwards, this would not matter. But as long as the insurgents retain the capability to strike, apparently still at will, in slaughtering so many civilians at a time, then in political terms the "islands of security" or "spreading ink blots" strategy is effectively negated, however many its real achievements in other areas.

The situation may yet improve. Many of the 30,000 additional U.S. troops mandated by President George W. Bush's "surge" strategy are not yet in Iraq and the full force is not expected to be deployed until the end of May. There may yet be light at the end of this tunnel. But it is not detectable yet.

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