Seven so-called "gated communities" have been or are being built, according to military officials, and more might be coming under the wide-ranging Baghdad security crackdown launched nine weeks ago.

Officials said the walls would help create islands of security by controlling the flow of people and vehicles in some of the city's most violent neighborhoods, and by keeping armed groups from using the areas as launching pads or targets for attacks.

The U.S. military has said that the new wall being constructed in Baghdad is meant to secure the minority Sunni community of Azamiyah, which "has been trapped in a spiral of sectarian violence and retaliation." The area, located on the eastern side of the Tigris River, would be completely gated and surrounded with concrete barriers, with entrances and exits manned by Iraqi soldiers, according to the U.S. military.

A handout obtained by The Associated Press from a local official in Azamiyah who spoke on condition of anonymity because of security concerns but said he was given the handout by the U.S. military said the wall will be 12 feet high, about 2 feet thick and topped with coils of barbed wire. The military earlier said it would run three miles. Some residents and local officials in the neighborhood complained that they had not been consulted in advance about the barrier.

"This will make the whole district a prison. This is collective punishment on the residents of Azamiyah," said Ahmed al-Dulaimi, a 41-year-old engineer who lives in the area.

U.S. commanders in northern Baghdad said the 12-foot-high barrier would make it more difficult for suicide bombers to strike and for death squads and militia fighters from sectarian factions to attack one another and then slip back to their home turf. Construction began April 10 and is expected to be completed by the end of the month.

Baghdad already has thousands of blast walls, checkpoints and other temporary barriers, including a massive wall around the Green Zone.

But, this new barrier being constructed in Adhamiya would be the first to be based in essence on sectarian considerations.

Now, consider this...

Many experts believe that the U.S. government fueled the strife between Sunni and Shiite immediately following the invasion - when the U.S. officials announced that no Sunni would be allowed to work or hold positions in the new government. Many, many knowledgeable people believe that the only way to create peace and harmony in Iraq is to allow the Sunni to once again work and serve in their own government.

What are we doing? Well, we are not involving the Sunni.

No, just the opposite, evidently, we are walling them off.

What wall has ever worked well? The Great Wall of China? How about the wall being built between Arizona and Mexico? The wall that creates a state of apartheid for the Palestinians? The Berlin Wall? How will the Iraqis feel about us now? Now that they have to ask permission to pass through a wall in addition to all the checkpoints and barbed wire and rubble?

Will they ever have water, electricity - or liberty?

George Bush told us that in 2003 we would be greeted as liberators.

So, I ask all reasonable readers:

Can the U.S. really expect the world (or anybody for that matter) to believe that we stand for (and fight for) "liberty" when what we really do is invade a foreign and sovereign nation and then proceed to wall off large numbers of its innocent citizens?