The Comment Channel
Leading article: A moment of clarity amid the bloodshed and carnage

The once great metropolis of Baghdad is now effectively a dozen small cities, each patrolled by its own sectarian militia. Only the Kurdish regions in the north of the country are unscathed. And even the future of that enclave of relative stability is in doubt as Iraq hurtles, apparently inexorably, towards final break-up.
Leading article: An underlying sickness

At a time when our health service is wrestling with a major debt crisis, it is dispiriting to learn that it is also wasting a huge amount of money on a daily basis. The Department of Health claims today that the NHS could save £2.2bn a year if local trusts improved the way they handled certain services.
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Rebecca Tyrrel: Days Like Those
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Charles Nevin: A radical proposal... let's make tax fun
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John Lichfield: Our Man In Paris
- Saul David: History warns us to withdraw
- Clare Short: I quit because this is not a Labour government
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Sarah Sands: All you need is... a damn good lawyer
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Agnès C Poirier: Your women are the philosopher queens of world drinking. Santé!
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Richard Ingrams' Week: On the crest of a wave or merely swept out to sea?
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Johann Hari: Where is the support for Muslim women?
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Yasmin Alibhai-Brown: Blair and Bush should be in the dock
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Bruce Anderson: Those of us who advocated this war have a duty to ask how it turned out so terribly
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Simon Carr: The Kitchen Capitalist
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Terence Blacker: The life of a celebrity toddler is not an enviable one