The Islamic Kingdom of Qaim

Failure at home, failure abroad. President Bush's incompetence grows more lethal every day.

In Iraq, Abu Musab al Zarqawi has taken control of Qaim, a city near the Syrian border.

A sign newly posted at the entrance of Qaim declared, "Welcome to the Islamic Kingdom of Qaim." A statement posted in mosques described Qaim as an "Islamic kingdom liberated from the occupation."

Zarqawi's fighters were killing officials and civilians seen as government-allied or anti-Islamic, witnesses, residents and others said. On Sunday, the bullet-riddled body of a woman lay in a street of Qaim. A sign left on her corpse declared, "A prostitute who was punished."

There was no immediate comment from the U.S. or Iraqi military. A U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad, Lt. Col. Steven Boylan, said he was looking into the reports.

Qaim, within a few miles of the Syrian border, has been a major stronghold for insurgents ferrying fighters, weapons and money from Syria into the rest of Iraq along a network of Euphrates River towns.

For this, Bush gutted the National Guard so badly that it could not respond to the natural disaster wrought by Hurricane Katrina in Louisiana. Al Qaeda, which had no significant presence in Iraq before Bush's folly, owns now one of its cities, a strategic stronghold for the insurgency.