The neoconservatives in Washington realized their mistakes dealing with terrorism and now must change their policy toward the matter, the independent Shabab al-Iraq newspaper said Tuesday.

Why did the war on terrorism fail?

The Rand Corp., a non-profit think tank, released a report this summer highlighting Pentagon analyses on the numbers and statistics of terrorist organizations and their activities.

Although the report shows terrorist organizations repeatedly failed to achieve their objectives, announcements from Pentagon officials that the terrorists are still not completely defeated continue to percolate from Washington.

The National Liberation Front in Algeria, for example, was labeled a terrorist organization by U.S. officials, although it was a resistance group that liberated Algeria from the French occupation, the paper said.

The Pentagon doesn't differentiate between legitimate liberation movements calling for an end to occupation and terrorist groups.

The Rand report stated that the U.S. war on terror has failed and suggests modifying its methods to reactivate the fight. One of these methods is to persuade religious figures to support the war on radicalism.

Calls for people to avoid involvement in terrorist activities are more effective than the use of violence, which creates more violence.

One of the ways to end terrorism and radicalism is to understand people's pain instead of using oppression, surrender and violence.

Fighting terrorism must start with ending the reasons for its existence, the paper said.

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Other newspapers spoke of the U.S. presidential election and the debates and policies of the Republican and Democratic nominees.

Many U.S. politicians, including Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., and others who oppose President Bush's administration, have said the United States has offered Iraq to Iran on a plate of gold. This was one of the biggest mistakes of the Iraq war, al-Basaer newspaper of the Muslim Scholars Association of Iraq said.

The joke of the U.S.-Iranian coexistence in Iraq.

Despite many U.S. experts calling the war in Iraq a failure, presumptive Republican nominee Sen. John McCain of Arizona blames Democratic nominee Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois for the failure of the U.S. war in Iraq.

Signs of failure in Iraq are represented by the fragile security situation, the presence of the largest number of armed forces in support of the U.S. mission there and the existence of one of the largest U.S. prisons in the world at Camp Bucca in Basra.

Furthermore, meetings between U.S. and Iranian officials in Baghdad are scandals the U.S. administration hopes to cover up.

It is ironic that the U.S. administration wants Iraq to "end" Iranian influence in the country when it was the United States that brought in a government full of Iranian loyalists.

Iran's authorities, meanwhile, are in the process of suing an Iraqi newspaper for its coverage of Iranian interference in Iraqi internal affairs.

The United States accuses the Iraqi government of being entangled with Iran when it is just the opposite because they knew prior to the Iraq invasion that most of those who were coming to power lived in exile in Iran for decades.

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On the other hand, discussions of the political dispute over the vote on the provincial elections law were a subject covered by other local Iraqi newspapers.

The principle of reconciliation is a central point to writing the Iraqi Constitution, forming the Iraqi government, ending the sectarian strife and improving the security situation, the Kurdish al-Ittihad newspaper of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan said Tuesday.

The stage that required political reconciliation still holds.

Most parties have dealt with one another according to the principle of reconciliation. The first to reconcile with the other parties were the Kurds, who realized that building a democratic Iraq requires an acceptance of all positions.

The Kurdish political leadership that was founded according to the concept of "democracy of accordance" claim they rescued political parties from marginalization, prevented domination of the stronger blocs and achieved the balance needed for political progress in Iraq.

Five years from the removal of the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein, the political process began moving backward as the time to vote for the provincial elections law approached, making any potential for reverse momentum likely.

The failure to reach consensus is a serious obstacle for the political parties that are against the concept of a federal state in Iraq and the democracy mentioned in the constitution.

For the Kurds, a non-federalized state in Iraq is a step backward and a repetition of the "black" history they have tried to erase.

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