THE FULCRUM

Insurgents launched coordinated attacks against police and government buildings across Iraq Thursday, less than a week before the handover of sovereignty. Sixty-nine people including three American soldiers were killed, and more than 270 people were wounded, Iraqi and U.S. officials said.

The large number of attacks, mostly directed at Iraqi security services, was a clear sign of just how powerful the insurgency in Iraq remains -- and could be the start of a new push to torpedo the June 30 transfer of sovereignty to an interim transitional government.

This is a case where [their] mantra works in reverse. You are either against them or [you're] with them.

It would be a mistake, however, to consider the Shiites a problem solved. Rather, Bush administration strategists should undertake an in-depth analysis of the entire Shiite phenomenon, which since the Iranian revolution that brought Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini to power in Iran in 1979 has repeatedly upset America's plans in the Persian Gulf. It is vital that Washington understand that it cannot consider the Shiites of Iraq to be an independent, national body. Shiism, forged during more than 1,500 years of persecution at the hands of the Islamic world's Sunnis, is a phenomenon that transcends borders and domestic politics.

But as the Supreme Court prepares to rule on the legal status of the 595 men imprisoned here, an examination by The New York Times has found that government and military officials have repeatedly exaggerated both the danger the detainees posed and the intelligence they have provided.

In interviews, dozens of high-level military, intelligence and law-enforcement officials in the United States, Europe and the Middle East said that contrary to the repeated assertions of senior administration officials, none of the detainees at the United States Naval Base at Guantánamo Bay ranked as leaders or senior operatives of Al Qaeda. They said only a relative handful — some put the number at about a dozen, others more than two dozen — were sworn Qaeda members or other militants able to elucidate the organization's inner workings.

The judge granted the defense request to interview top officials in the chain of command, including Gen. John P. Abizaid, the commander of American forces in the Middle East, Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, the ground commander in Iraq, and others.

The pre-trial hearings also indicated that the defense lawyers would try to show that the highest levels of the government created an atmosphere in which any technique was acceptable to get information from detainees.

LOONEYVILLE, W.VA.--The Christian Coalition has fallen far from its glory days as a pro-Republican fighting force in the 1990s. But now Pastor J. Allen Fine has a new political weapon.

"Gay marriage is societal suicide," says Mr. Fine, a religious broadcaster who was recently installed as state director of the coalition's West Virginia chapter. "We were asked on our radio program, 'Is sodomy still a sin?' It brought in so many calls and the dish of the fax machine overflowed."

The American occupation of Iraq will formally end this month having failed to fulfill many of its goals and stated promises intended to transform the country into a stable democracy, according to a detailed examination drawing upon interviews with senior U.S. and Iraqi officials and internal documents of the occupation authority.