Welcome to the Quagmire (Juan Cole on Iraq in Salon.com)

[carolinayellowdog]

Here's a highly detailed, and very alarming, account of what we are facing in Iraq:

http://salon.com/news/feature/2004/03/19/iraq/index.html

the first 4 paras:

March 19, 2004 | The Bush administration's hope for a clean, quick transition to a sovereign Iraqi government on June 30 has been dealt a series of blows by local Iraqi political forces, of which the bombing campaign by insurgents is only one. Only a year before, the Americans who planned the invasion were largely ignorant of these groups and their leaders. In their haste to hand over Iraq to someone, the Americans have ceased even trying to find solutions to the most divisive issues, creating a series of political time bombs for the future.

Last summer, the U.S. civil administrator, Paul Bremer, said: "We dominate the scene and we will continue to impose our will on this country." But by early November, it had become absolutely clear that the U.S. could not hope to rule Iraq by fiat for a matter of years, as the Bush administration had earlier envisioned. The ongoing Sunni Arab insurgency and widespread lack of security had already made the center-north of the country ungovernable. It even made the capital unsafe, as the recent horrific bombings at Kazimiyah and at the Mount Lebanon Hotel have demonstrated.

The Kurds had blocked an American attempt to bring in 12,000 Turkish troops to fight the insurgents in the Sunni Arab areas, ensuring that U.S. soldiers remained on the front line in Fallujah and Ramadi. The U.S. was weak in the north and relied heavily on the Kurdish militias, or peshmergas. Were the majority Shiites to grow weary of Coalition Provisional Authority rule and begin an uprising of their own, the Americans in Baghdad came to recognize, the entire country could fall into chaos.

By Nov. 15, Bremer had hammered out an agreement with Iraqis on the appointed Interim Governing Council that would allow a transition to a sovereign and more legitimate Iraqi government by June 30. But then everything fell apart, as Bremer's plan smashed into one brick wall after another.

[nickinSTL]

1. Bremer

'Paul Bremer, said: "We dominate the scene and we will continue to impose our will on this country."'

:wtf: ?

So much for trying to install democracy!

[acmavm]

2. Somehow I don't think that you dominate anything if all you're doing is

constantly reacting to whatever fiasco is currently underway. If it isn't those darn 'terrorist and Saddamists' it's Al Quaeda, or it's Chalabi throwing a monkey wrench in the constitutional works. Whatever. I've never really thought the bush* administration and their little henchmen were ever really in control of anything.