Comments on: The Basra Aftermath

By: Bryan

Bryan — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 04:35:07 +0000

This is at least a three dimensional conflict, that may require something like string theory before we get the hell out.

Don’t forget the Turkoman v Kurd conflict in Kirkuk that is involving the Turks at only a slightly lower rate of interest than that the PKK problem. Then there’s the US “ally”, the MEK, in Kurdistan who are considered a terrorist group by most of the world and Iran wants to wipe out.

We really need to find somewhere else to be.

By: Jack K

Jack K — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 04:08:45 +0000

…the grimly interesting aspect about the current and looming circumstances in Iraq is that there probably isn’t just an “other’ civil war, but may in fact be three – or maybe even four – to deal with. There’s the classic Sunni v. Shi’ia tensions; there’s the Kurds v. imported Sunni’s in the Kurd ‘homeland’; there’s ‘the Kurds v. The World’ addressing their hunger to establish a nation of their very own across the frontiers of three other existing countries; and there is the raw straightforward Shi’ia v. Shi’ia conflict to determine who owns all the steelies in this particular high-stakes marbles game….

Gee Dub and his little band of half-wit neocon nation-builders have mismanaged the dynamics of this exercise in ways that will add new textures to the whole concept of “hopelessly inept”…

By: Bryan

Bryan — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 02:00:34 +0000

Actually, that would be in the “other” civil war – Sunni v Shi’ia v Kurd, as opposed the Shi’ia only civil war, the Badr v Sadr conflict.

We need out now.

By: Badtux

Badtux — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 01:32:37 +0000

Correction: Arming and training *several* partisan militias in the middle of a civil war. Including a couple of the militias that happen to be shooting at each other from time to time (the Sunni militias enrolled to go after al Qaida, and of course the “Iraqi army”).

Not that this is unusual for U.S. policy in the area. We were selling anti-tank missiles to the Iranians at the same time that we were selling chemical and biological warfare gear to the Iraqis back during their 1980’s war, after all… arming both sides of conflicts in that area seems to be, like, an old hobby of the United States for some reason. Huh!

– Badtux the History Penguin