You may have seen Army Captain Powell's interview last week on television from Iraq, when he said, quote, "I know it's hard to get out and get on the ground and report the news, and I understand that. And I appreciate that fact. But for those of us who actually have a chance to go out and go on patrols and meet the Iraqi army and Iraqi police, and go on patrols with them, we are very satisfied with the way things are going here, and we are confident that if we are allowed to finish the job we started, we'll be very proud of it, and our country will be proud of us for doing it."

What we observed -- end quote. What we observed during our trip is very consistent with what we have been seeing and with the reports we are getting from our commanders in the field. And I am concerned about what appears to be a growing gap between what people are hearing back here in the United States and with what we saw on this trip.

Finding a way to head off civil war is at the heart of all the major initiatives - including the talks over a new constitution - in Iraq. But by most common political-science definitions of the term, "civil war" is already here.

"It's not a threat. It's not a potential. Civil war is a fact of life there now,'' says Pavel Baev, head of the Center for the Study of Civil War at the Peace Research Institute in Oslo, Norway. He argues that until the nature of the conflict is accurately seen, good solutions cannot be found. "What's happening in Iraq is a multidimensional conflict. There's international terrorism, banditry, the major foreign military presence. But the civil war is the central part of it - the violent contestation for power inside the country."

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The spreadsheets in Dr. Faad Ameen Bakr's computer shed some light on the casualty rate. Baghdad's chief pathologist pulls down the death toll for Iraq's capital in July: 1,083 murders, a new record.

Under Saddam Hussein, Baghdad was a violent city. But the highest murder rate before the war was 250 in one month. (By comparison, New York City with about 2 million more residents, had 572 murders in 2004, and a peak of 2,245 in 1990).

The month of June, with 870 murders, was the previous record in Baghdad. In a weary monotone, Dr. Bakr explains that 680 of the victims were shot, the rest "strangled, electrocuted, stabbed, killed by blunt trauma or burned to death." The totals don't include residents killed by Baghdad's frequent car-bombings.

While he won't discuss the religious background of the victims - citing the vulnerability of himself and his staff - Bakr says a growing number of victims show signs of "extreme torture" and arrive at the morgue in handcuffs or bound with the plastic ties used by the Iraqi military and police. "I wouldn't call it a civil war, but I would call it chronic instability," he says.

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Though there has been extensive training and equipment programs for the new Iraqi army and police, few Iraqis seem to be putting much faith in them. While Sunnis complain that new forces are infiltrated by the militias of the major Shiite parties, even many Shiites prefer to rely on sectarian militias for their own protection.