Disintegration of Iraq
Tomgram: Michael Schwartz on Disintegrating Iraqi Sovereignty
from TomDispatch
You know things are going badly indeed in Iraq when U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad chooses to use an image -- Pandora's box -- previously wielded only by that critic of the Iraq War, French President Jacques Chirac. Back in September 2004, Chirac compared American actions in Iraq to the famed box of myth, at a moment when Arab League head Amr Mussa was warning that the "gates of Hell" had been opened in that country (a comment assumed at the time to be but another example of overemotional Arab rhetoric). It took a year and a half, the blowing up the Golden Mosque in Samarra, and a near civil war, but now Khalilzad is ready to agree. In a Los Angeles Times interview, according to reporter Borzou Daragahi, he offered, "a far gloomier picture than assessments made in recent days by U.S. military spokesmen." In fact, he suggested the obvious -- if, that is, he weren't representing a government whose Vice President is still claiming that "progress in Iraq has not come easily, but it has been steady." He admitted that the "potential is there" for Iraq to fall into full-blown civil war and then he brought Chirac's image to bear. "We have opened," he said, "the Pandora's box and the question is, what is the way forward?"
You also know things aren't going well when the Pentagon issues an "Iraq Progress Report" (a "security and stability" assessment it is required to send to Congress every four months) indicating that "insurgent attacks in Iraq reached a postwar high in the four months preceding Jan. 20." You know things are not going well when, as that report notes, 88% of Iraqis in the Sunni areas of Tikrit and Bakuba, asked to describe "individuals attacking coalition forces," called them either "freedom fighters" or "patriots." (Don't even ask how that poll was taken.) Or when, surveying the ripples of chaos that George Bush's war has brought to the world, Brig. Gen. Robert L. Caslen, the Pentagon's deputy director for the war on terrorism, points to the plethora of terrorist groups popping into existence worldwide and states definitively, "We are not killing them faster than they are being created."
(Part 1 is here. Part 2 is here.)
from TomDispatch
You know things are going badly indeed in Iraq when U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad chooses to use an image -- Pandora's box -- previously wielded only by that critic of the Iraq War, French President Jacques Chirac. Back in September 2004, Chirac compared American actions in Iraq to the famed box of myth, at a moment when Arab League head Amr Mussa was warning that the "gates of Hell" had been opened in that country (a comment assumed at the time to be but another example of overemotional Arab rhetoric). It took a year and a half, the blowing up the Golden Mosque in Samarra, and a near civil war, but now Khalilzad is ready to agree. In a Los Angeles Times interview, according to reporter Borzou Daragahi, he offered, "a far gloomier picture than assessments made in recent days by U.S. military spokesmen." In fact, he suggested the obvious -- if, that is, he weren't representing a government whose Vice President is still claiming that "progress in Iraq has not come easily, but it has been steady." He admitted that the "potential is there" for Iraq to fall into full-blown civil war and then he brought Chirac's image to bear. "We have opened," he said, "the Pandora's box and the question is, what is the way forward?"
You also know things aren't going well when the Pentagon issues an "Iraq Progress Report" (a "security and stability" assessment it is required to send to Congress every four months) indicating that "insurgent attacks in Iraq reached a postwar high in the four months preceding Jan. 20." You know things are not going well when, as that report notes, 88% of Iraqis in the Sunni areas of Tikrit and Bakuba, asked to describe "individuals attacking coalition forces," called them either "freedom fighters" or "patriots." (Don't even ask how that poll was taken.) Or when, surveying the ripples of chaos that George Bush's war has brought to the world, Brig. Gen. Robert L. Caslen, the Pentagon's deputy director for the war on terrorism, points to the plethora of terrorist groups popping into existence worldwide and states definitively, "We are not killing them faster than they are being created."
(Part 1 is here. Part 2 is here.)
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