Iraq: Beyond Quagmire

The latest Rolling Stone features a truly frightening story by Tim Dickinson about what's really going on in Iraq and what we can expect in coming weeks and years. Bottom line: no matter what we do, it's going to be a continuing horror show.

The article features the opinions of a long list of diplomatic, counter-terrorism and Iraq experts: Zbigniew Brzezinski, national security adviser to President Carter; Richard Clarke, counterterrorism czar from 1992 to 2003; Nir Rosen, author of In the Belly of the Green Bird, about Iraq's spiral into civil war, speaking from Cairo, where he has been interviewing Iraqi refugees; Gen. Tony McPeak (retired), member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the Gulf War; Bob Graham, former chair, Senate Intelligence Committee; Chas Freeman, Ambassador to Saudi Arabia during the Gulf War; president of the Middle East Policy Council; Paul Pillar, former lead counterterrorism analyst for the CIA; Michael Scheuer, former chief of the CIA's Osama bin Laden unit; author of Imperial Hubris; and blogger Juan Cole, professor of modern Middle East history at the University of Michigan.

The panel's best-case scenario: civil war in Iraq and a stronger Al Qaeda. Their most-likely scenario: years of ethnic cleansing and war with Iran. Their worst-case scenario: World War III.

Excerpts:

General Tony McPeak: "Even if we had a million men to go in, it's too late now. Humpty Dumpty can't be put back together again ... We're going to see a full-scale intercommunal war that may not burn out until one side is all dead, all gone. The Kurds would like to sit on the sidelines, but I don't see how they stay out, especially up in the Kirkuk area, where they sit on a lot of oil. This is going to be ethnic cleansing like we had in Kosovo or Bosnia -- but written big, in capital letters. And we can't stop it."

Nir Rosen: "There is no best-case scenario for Iraq. It's complete anarchy now. No family is untouched by kidnappings, murders, ethnic cleansing -- everybody lives in a constant state of terror. Leaving aside Kurdistan, which is very different, there's nobody in Iraq who is safe. You can get killed for being a Sunni, for being a Shia, for being educated, for being part of the former regime, for being part of the current regime. The Americans are still killing Iraqi civilians left and right. There's no government in Iraq; it doesn't exist outside of the Green Zone. That's not only the government's fault, that's our fault: We deliberately created a weak government so that we would have final authority over everything in Iraq."

Bob Graham: "This administration seems to be getting ready to make -- at a much more significant, escalated level -- the same mistake we made in Iran that we made in Iraq. If Iraq has been a disaster, this would be multiple times Iraq. The extent to which this could be the horror of the twenty-first century is hard to exaggerate."

Don't you wish we could somehow force every cowering Democrat in Congress to read this piece? Along with every person who thinks impeachment is a joke? How about those who are going about their lives -- or supposedly representing us in the government -- as if it's business as usual?

Many Democrats had a hand in allowing the madmen in this administration to creat this situation. Can we really afford the luxury of allowing these same madmen to take us through the last years of Bush's second term? And what makes anyone think this bunch will actually give up their hold on the imperial presidency ever IF the Congress passes something with teeth to stop the war, or even IF we impeach, or even IF we wait until 2008 to elect a new team? Sometimes it can seem that every road leads to the same horrific place and that it's too late to stop the inevitable no matter what we do. Still, the only hope we have is to try. And keep on trying. Every damned day. Even when we constantly come across more news like this:

Top House Democrats retreated Monday from an attempt to limit President Bush's authority for taking military action against Iran ... Officials said Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other members of the leadership had decided to strip from a major military spending bill a requirement for Bush to gain approval from Congress before moving against Iran. Conservative Democrats as well as lawmakers concerned about the possible impact on Israel had argued for the change in strategy.