Iraq in middle of Civil War

Researcher87

Electoral Member
Sep 20, 2006
496
2
18
In Monsoon West (B.C)
BAGHDAD (AP) - The Sunni Arab and al-Qaida insurgency that first shoved Iraq toward chaos three years ago clearly had taken a back seat by Sunday to the sectarian bloodletting that is sending the country spiralling toward, if not deeper into, civil war.
Evidence continued to mount in the 44th month of U.S. involvement that Iraqi centres of power - politicians and the government, the police and military - were unable or unwilling to rein in violence in parts of the country where Sunni and Shiite Muslim or Kurdish populations rub up against one another.
The violence has forced at least 1.5 million Iraqis to flee their homeland, with hundreds of new passports being issued daily to those who can afford a plane ticket or taxi ride out of the country, according to the Migration Ministry. The ministry said 300,000 people had also left their homes for elsewhere in Iraq.
The Shiite Majority in parliament, over complaints of dirty tricks from rival Sunni and even some Shiite legislators, adopted a measure that would allow the effective partition of the country after an 18-month waiting period, something widely opposed in polls of Iraqis.
"The starting point is to recognize that Iraq is not going to be a democratic, unified country that serves as a model for the region. The violence and the Sunni-Shiite division have already ruled that out," Dennis Ross, a Mideast peace negotiator and policy maker for former U.S. presidents Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush, wrote in an Op-ed column for the Washington Post on Sunday.
A partition would leave Iraq with a weak central government and largely independent states run by Kurds in the north, Shiites in the south and Sunnis in the centre and west, giving impetus for still more violence and still further population upheaval.
Iraqis so-called national unity government announced that next Saturday's much-anticipated national reconciliation conference was indefinitely postponed for unspecified "emergency reasons." A week before the planned opening of the conference, Iraq's deeply divided politicians had not managed even to agree on a venue for the meeting.
Shiite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, in power for just more than four months, took office at the head of what was termed a national unity government. Within days he had presented a 24-point plan for national reconciliation. The inability to meet on that topic speaks to the failure of both his government and opposition politicians.
The postponement was announced on the first anniversary of the successful national referendum which adopted the country's first post-Saddam constitution, which was hailed at the time of a harbinger of a peaceful and democratic Iraq.
By the close of the weekend, at least 86 people were reported dead in a two-day spree of sectarian revenge killings and insurgent bombings, mainly in one city north of Baghdad.
The capital, where random sectarian violence and roving death squads have caused traffic jams to vanish and commerce and society to head toward a standstill, felt like a stick of dynamite with a lighted fuse.
American analysts like Ross and Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies have said this week that 15,000 to 20,000 additional U.S. troops were needed to give the Americans an even shot at leaving behind a peaceful Iraq.
Then, they say, major policy changes are necessary in both Washington and Baghdad.
"Iraq is already in a state of serious civil war. The current efforts at political compromise and improved security at best are buying time. There is a critical risk that Iraq will drift into a major civil conflict over the coming months, see its present government fail, and/or divide and separate in some form," Cordesman wrote in an analysis last week.
Ross said the best solution was, in fact, the formation of a federal state, with Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds running areas where they are majorities.
A majority of Shiite politicians favour a division, but the larger population and some powerful leaders like anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr refuse to accept such a plan. It is, however, highly popular among minority Kurds, who have fought for centuries to carve out an independent state from lands they live on across a belt of northeastern Syria, northern Iraq, southeastern Turkey and northwestern Iran.
Sunnis, a minority sect in Iraq that ran the country until the ouster of Saddam, are violently opposed, fearing it would leave them with no revenue from Iraq's oil riches. Natural resources are largely absent from their lands in central and western Iraq.
Perhaps the most shocking development of a tough week in Iraq was a new study that estimated the Iraq war has led to the deaths of nearly 655,000 Iraqis as of July.
Researchers from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and the Al Mustansiriya University in Baghdad derived that estimate from a door-to-door survey, conducted by doctors, of 1,849 households in Iraq. Taking the number of deaths reported by household residents, they extrapolated to a countrywide figure.
The researchers, reflecting the inherent uncertainties in such extrapolations, said they were 95 per cent certain that the real number lay somewhere between 392,979 and 942,636 deaths.
Even the smaller figure is almost eight times the estimate some others have derived.
President George W. Bush and his administration dismissed the study as not "credible" and statisticians and pollsters came down on both sides of the issue. Most previous estimates of Iraqi deaths put the number at about 50,000 or slightly above.
 

tamarin

House Member
Jun 12, 2006
3,197
22
38
Oshawa ON
Of course, it's a civil war. Butchery is non-stop and it's routine to hear of mass torture and beheadings. And it's also one more nail in the coffin of American power and administrative prudence. Their best minds have completely phucked up again. So much for the gifts of higher education and training.
I'm not sure what failure in Iraq means to us down the road. But I do know this is a tipping point. Things will start to be done differently. But I doubt the results will be what we like.
 

Sassylassie

House Member
Jan 31, 2006
2,976
7
38
Yes it's a civil war now, what can we do and how can this be changed? I haven't the foggest idea.
 

Hotshot

Electoral Member
May 31, 2006
330
0
16
Blame the yanks and the war criminal buskinski for starting this whole mess. Absolutely disgusting.
 

Researcher87

Electoral Member
Sep 20, 2006
496
2
18
In Monsoon West (B.C)
At least people see that it is a civil war and are not as blind as some of Bush officials. For example the war criminal Cheney and Rumsfield.

And sadly, U.S humanitarian projects in Iraq end in 2008, and Congress has saids they will not resign them up so most reconstruction works will end after 2008 unless they are NGO or Iraqi run.
 

gopher

Hall of Fame Member
Jun 26, 2005
21,513
65
48
Minnesota: Gopher State
http://www.angus-reid.com/polls/index.cfm/fuseaction/viewItem/itemID/13486


Angus Reid Global Monitor : Polls & Research

Time to Let Iraqis Take Over, Say Americans

October 16, 2006

- Many adults in the United States believe their soldiers currently deployed in Iraq should start coming home, according to a poll by Opinion Dynamics released by Fox News. 73 per cent of respondents think it is time for the people of Iraq to take on most of the burden of security in their country.
The coalition effort against Saddam Hussein’s regime was launched in March 2003. At least 2,754 American soldiers have died during the military operation, and more than 20,800 troops have been wounded in action.
In December 2005, Iraqi voters renewed their National Assembly. In May, Shiite United Iraqi Alliance member Nouri al-Maliki officially took over as prime minister. 41 per cent of respondents believe the U.S. should end its involvement in Iraq, while 39 per cent disagree.
On Oct. 12, U.S. president George W. Bush discussed his rationale for military action in Iraq, saying, "It is essential that the United States treat threats seriously before they come home to hurt us, before they fully materialize. I saw a threat. Members of both parties in the United States Congress saw a threat. The United Nations saw a threat in Iraq. Removing Saddam Hussein from power was the right decision, and the world is better off for it." 49 per cent of respondents think George W. Bush intentionally misled the American people about the presence of weapons in Iraq, up five points since November.
Polling Data
Please tell me if you agree or disagree with the following statement. The United States has sacrificed enough for the people of Iraq, and now it is time that they take on most of the burden of security in their country and let U.S. troops start to come home.

Agree
73%
Disagree
20%
Don’t know
7%
What do you think the United States should do in Iraq?

End involvement in Iraq
41%
Continue involvement in Iraq
39%
Mixed
16%
Don’t know
3%
Regarding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, do you think George W. Bush gave the American people the best prewar intelligence available or intentionally misled the American people about the presence of weapons?


Oct. 2006
Nov. 2005
Intentionally misled
49%
44%
Gave best intelligence
44%
46%
Not sure
7%
10%
Source: Opinion Dynamics / Fox News
Methodology: Telephone interviews with 900 American likely voters, conducted on Oct. 10 and Oct. 11, 2006. Margin of error is 3 per cent.






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The USA's continued presence in Iraq does NOTHING to advance the cause of peace or to stop the spread of terrorism. Quite the contrary, it stimulates terrorism or more accurately, counter terrorism. Many Western scholars have written about it for years but the war profiteers and their defenders continue to insist that Iraq is now Paradise.
 

tamarin

House Member
Jun 12, 2006
3,197
22
38
Oshawa ON
Well, you don't have to be a scholar to have a discerning view on Iraq. And many a scholar is part of the problem in the US's being there.
Basics:
-Iraq is now in civil war
-the American presence can't contain it
-mounting American casualties (almost 50 US dead already in October) dictate a growing unease in the US public and administration over staying
-when troops do leave the US will have to deal with the fallout:
-obscene levels of new violence and instability
-an escalated purge of all those who have collaborated with the US in rebuilding Iraq
-a return to fundamentalist rule
-a new and autocratic Iraq much like what was originally there

What a waste it's all been.
 

gopher

Hall of Fame Member
Jun 26, 2005
21,513
65
48
Minnesota: Gopher State
Bush's biblically inspired "Mission From God" hasn't worked to improve conditions in Iraq. Still, we are told by certain Islamophobes on this forum, Christians have done no harm to Muslims.

Yeah, right.