What if tomorrow, the US vanished from Iraq?

[The Witch]

I just thought it might be interesting to posit what would happen if, when the sun rose on Iraq tomorrow, all of the US soldiers sent there for the war had mysteriously vanished?

Good things and bad things, I suppose.

Good things.

-A group of insurgents, determined to attack a convoy they'd sighted yesterday, goes to the rendezvous point and discovered nobody there.

-A woman who had fled a city in anticipation of a bombing returns to find her house intact.

Bad things.

-News of the newly unguarded oil fields reaches the insurgents before it reaches the government.

-Saddam Hussein gets at least partly out of jail before the Iraqi contingent of his guards find him and force him back in.

-Prisoners of war are locked in their cells with nobody there to get them out.

-A diplomat who was counting on a US army-led escort to the nearest town gets assassinated.


What do you all think? Should be an interesting thread.

[rman]

1. No more special ops pretending to be insurgents..

That'd be a good thing.

[jimshoes]

2. Treasury quits bleeding $1billion a week

US troops quit bleeding as well.

[kcass1954]

3. Good thing - We'll cap the US death toll at 1907. n/t

[donsu]

4. their electric will come on and stay on and drinking water will be clean

and, oh gosh, they will be able to use their own oil and use the profit to rebuild their country that the bushgang destroyed.

[renie408]

5. I don't understand the logic behind this

I was under the impression that the larger problem in Iraq was basically a CIVIL war? Isn't it the Sunnis pretty much attacking everybody else because they have been displaced and are getting what they think is the sucky end of the stick? Why would they stop attacking the Shia just because we aren't there? Wouldn't their attacks just get worse because we are not there to defend the water treatment and electric plants or the oil fields?

[donsu]

6. the impression that you are under is clouded

widen your information gathering sources

[blondeatlast]

7. And that is our responsibility how? They've been fighting each other

for centuries.

The civil war isn't why we are even supposedly there, anyway; it's just convenient for those who are grasping for something positive to come out of the quagmire in Iraq.