Pollack:" Iraq May End Up Worse Off Than Under Saddam" Ya Think???

[leftchick]

It Already HAS!!!!! :argh:

http://www.cfr.org/publication/11727/pollack.html

Kenneth M. Pollack, director of research and senior fellow at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy and a leading expert on the Persian Gulf area, says Iraq is now in a low-level civil war, and it is looking increasingly doubtful that the United States “can break out of this downward trajectory.” He recommends that after the November elections, President Bush send an ultimatum to the Iraqi leadership threatening an end to U.S. support if dramatic changes are not made.

Pollack, who wrote The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq in 2002, says he wrestles every day with whether he should have written that book. He says what would “justify this war would be getting the reconstruction right, would be creating an Iraq that is stable, that is safer, that is more prosperous than it was under Saddam.” But Pollack says the country appears headed in the opposite direction. “I’m afraid the result that we’re headed toward in Iraqis that it’s going to be even worse off than it was under Saddam Hussein,” he says.

The last time we had an interview was in February and you had just completed a major study that said this was a “make or break” year on Iraq. With two and a half months left in the year, can we safely conclude the Iraq policy is broken?

If it’s not broken completely, it’s breaking and breaking fast. I think what we warned of back in February has very unfortunately come to fruition. What we saw this year were the militias consolidate their control, both in the countryside and over the political process in Baghdad. That’s made it exceptionally difficult to break out of the logjam that’s been created there. It’s created all kinds of violence throughout the country. People mostly focus on Baghdad but the situation in Basra is awful. The situation in a whole range of other cities in central Iraq is awful.


:banghead:

[aquart]

1. Well, how clever of them to notice.

[leftchick]

2. now he realises...

One last question, just to satisfy my curiosity, do you ever regret writing, The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq, in 2002?

You know it’s something I wrestle with just about every day. I literally was wrong, along with a great many other people, about the weapons-of-mass-destruction threat. I was definitely wrong about it. But there’s a lot of stuff in that book that I think was right, and I think was right on the money. I go back and read the chapters where I talk about the importance of reconstruction, about how horrible everything could be if we did reconstruction wrong. I have a line in there: “We will create as many problems as we solve if we don’t fully commit ourselves to doing this properly.” And I laid out exactly what needed to happen, all the things that we didn’t do.

So I actually think there’s a lot of stuff in the book that’s smart, that was exactly on the money. But you know I wrestle every day with this question of whether or not the war was the right thing to do. For me, the bottom line, and I’ve said this time and time again, is that given the fact that the weapons-of-mass-destruction threat was not as dangerous as our intelligence community and the other intelligence communities believed it was and that I relied on to make my argument, the only thing that’s out there to justify this war would be getting the reconstruction right, would be creating an Iraq that is stable, that is safer, that is more prosperous than it was under Saddam. If we can do that, then I can look back on it and say, “We may have gone to war for the wrong reasons, but the result turned out to be good.” Unfortunately, I don’t think that’s the result that we’re headed towards. I’m afraid that the result that we’re headed towards in Iraq is that it’s going to be even worse off than it was under Saddam Hussein and we are now starting to see polls where increasing numbers of Iraqis are saying, “The war wasn’t worth it, because the situation today is worse than it was under Saddam.”

[NNN0LHI]

3. Bush should send an ultimatum to his puppets in the Green Zone?

Mr. Pollack is obviously on some very heavy drugs.

Don

[Jacobin]

4. "leading expert on Middle East?"

He's fucking Nostradamus in reverse! He's predicted what happened 3 years ago!! Amazing!!

:bounce:

[pampango]

5. Latest poll of Iraqis shows that they say all the death and

violence since the invasion have been worth it in order to get rid of Saddam.

I can condemn the immorality of Bush deciding to invade another country without ignoring the brutality of the dictator that the people of Iraq are glad is out of power. I think Americans have a hard time realizing how terrible life must have been under some like Saddam. Is hard for me to imagine that a nation of people would feel that any dictator was so bad that they would feel that all the horrible death and detraction has been a price worth paying.

Condemn the immorality of the invasion and the ineptness of the aftermath, but do not wish Saddam on anyone.

[leftchick]

8. do you have a link for that poll?

From what I have read many Iraqis would take the security of the Saddam Regime over the danger and insanity they are living in now. Over 80% want the US out Now!

Almost a million dead Iraqis since the invasion almost 4 years ago makes Saddam's 300,000 dead over a couple of decades look rather pathetic as a rational for removing him now doesn't it?

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

6. Not just Iraq, but the whole Middle-East is worse off.

The real consequences of Bush trying to enlarge his jock-strap size are yet to be felt.

The progressive forces in the M.E., the ones trying to oust the dictators and oil sheiks, the ones trying to curb the power of the Jihadists and Fundamentalists, have been marginalized into near oblivion.

The Arab "street" which suffers under the despots now turns to the likes of Hezbullah, Hamas, and Al-Queda, as the only ones willing to fight Western supported tyrannies. The progressives are now seen as collaborators because they support western concepts that are associated with invasion, bombing, and slaughter.

Now, the geniuses in the White House and Pentagon have finally come to realize that the streets of Baghdad, Basra, and Fallujah aren't littered with flowers but with corpses and IED's they're trying to find a way out of the quagmire they created. As usual, they're determined to do so by forcing the GI's to make the "ultimate sacrifice" and destroying what's left of Iraq so that they can hang on until the evil leftwing "appeasers" and "peaceniks" finally bail them out.

Then they can blame the ones who foretold the disaster that was obvious to anyone with two eyes a functioning brain and any knowledge of the Middle-East.

After the dust settles, and the corpses are buried, they can build another monument for the next batch of politicians weep over and dispatch the troops to die for nothing.

[enid602]

7. civics lesson

If all this is true, maybe it would be appropriate (and indeed fitting) to give civilian GWB over to the Iraqi Judicial system, much as we did with Saddam. It would be a good civics lesson for Georgie.