Scott Ritter STILL knows whereof he speaks regarding Iraq
... The year 2005 may have been the year of democratic elections in Iraq, but history will judge it as the year that set the foundation for large-scale civil war in Iraq. No amount of papering over of the deep and serious fractures that exist in post-Saddam Iraq can cover up the reality that Iraq today is a failed nation state.
In Iraq we find not only Sunni versus Shi'a and Arab versus Kurd, but Sunni versus Sunni (secular versus Islamist), Kurd versus Kurd (a renewal of the old KDP-PUK rivalry), and Shi'a versus Shi'a (the Iranian-backed SCIRI versus the home-grown Iraqi Shi'a movement led by Mokhtar al-Sadr).
Iraq today is a tinderbox waiting for a spark to set it off. Until now the presence of American troops has served as a fire brigade of sorts, extinguishing flames before they could explode out of control. But in doing so, the Americans have allowed for the accumulation of massive amounts of "fuel" in the form of resentment and greed and political ambition which will produce a fire storm that no American force, whatever the size, can extinguish...
The year 2006 will be the year in which America reaps what it has sown in Iraq. The "democratic government" of the SCIRI theocratic tyranny will serve to finally rupture the tragic nation state we once recognized as Iraq into a cauldron of competing fiefdoms, all of whom will be engaged in a life-or-death civil war that has the characteristics more akin to a wildfire than any known political process. Stuck in the middle will be the armed forces of the United States, powerless to stop the fighting which will erupt around them, and incapable of preventing themselves from getting scorched by the flames of civil conflict they helped fuel and ignite...
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And might I add -- of course, this administration will point the finger of blame for the disaster at those people who saw it coming and tried to warn them.
Because that's what you do when you're guilty as hell.
posted by Saintperle at
11:09 AM
