Baghdad will become Beirut: Iraq's three major religious and ethnic groups, the Sunnis, the Shiites, and the Kurds, will consolidate their respective positions in the center, south, and north of the country, recruit their militias, and get down to fighting for control of the power vacuum that is the post-war "peace."
Do you have any timetable on when the major fighting will commence? Aside from the random, though deadly, car bombings, this explosion in violence that you predicted has yet to materialize. Where exactly are the militias massing? When does the shooting war start? When are the Kurds going to break away, risking war with Turkey?
And will the “Last Copter Out of Baghdad” depart before the election?
Rick, I was looking over your 1/14/04 piece in which you stated the following:
Baghdad will become Beirut: Iraq's three major religious and ethnic groups, the Sunnis, the Shiites, and the Kurds, will consolidate their respective positions in the center, south, and north of the country, recruit their militias, and get down to fighting for control of the power vacuum that is the post-war "peace."
Do you have any timetable on when the major fighting will commence? Aside from the random, though deadly, car bombings, this explosion in violence that you predicted has yet to materialize. Where exactly are the militias massing? When does the shooting war start? When are the Kurds going to break away, risking war with Turkey?
And will the “Last Copter Out of Baghdad” depart before the election?
----
Couple of points. When will civil war commence? Well, the bombing of four churches yesterday might suggest it already has. And that the presence of 150,000 allied forces are what's keeping the lid on, more ore less.
Pretty good analysis of prospects for civil war by the CIA's former Saudi Arabia station chief here:
http://www.juancole.com/2004_04_01_juancole_archive.html
And, once again, I have to distance myself from the idiotic headline implying I argued that the MILITARY would pull out of Iraq. My argument was that the administration would pull back on their on-the-record goals for the civil administration--which largely revolved around U.S. privatization and the writing of a formal constiution--which proved to be 100% correct. In fact, they gave up on privatization the DAY after the first executive of a privatizing state-owned firm was shot, as I explain in the article.
I'm proud of that article. I said George Bush was going to move the goalline to the 50-yard-line in Iraq and declare he'd scored a touchdown on July 1, and he did.