It is a holy week, Easter and Passover, but a certain sadness lingers in the air.

It comes each morning with the news, with the headlines, and the awful reality of the horror happening by the hour in Iraq. We awaken to a lethal alarm clock giving us a body count. The best of our people -- our youngest and bravest -- are dying. They are there, making a sacrifice for the rest of us who are asked to make none. They are there because of fanatics who hate us for who we are -- Americans -- and declared war on us, not on Sept 11, but decades ago when only a few paid attention. The sadness is caused by more than just the casualty count.

We know what's going on in Baghdad and Fallujah. We see it on TV, talk about it at work, in line at the coffee shop, eating supper around the kitchen table. We know what soldiers do and how they die.

The tragedy is with the politicians, the powerful, as they play the blame game in Washington, pointing fingers at shadows of history rather than at themselves.

Today Condoleezza Rice testified to a commission charged with figuring out what happened, what didn't happen and why in the months and years before everything changed forever in the rubble of the towers.

Before her, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz told their stories.

Before them, Clinton's people took the stand.

They are all part of a separate universe, a world of politics where no one it seems is accountable or responsible and all are looking for partisan edge.

And that's the ultimate sadness.

Because those who died in New York, Washington, Pennsylvania, Afghanistan and Iraq were not killed because they were Democrats or Republicans. The religious fanatics who began this jihad are not interested in ideology. The dead are gone simply because they are from America.

And the tragedy is too many charged with taking on terror think the task is partisan instead of what it really is: a mission all of us need to be a success if we are to survive in a safer world.