Reuters: Report: Iraq on Brink of Becoming a Failed State

[marmar]

From CommonDreams.org:

Published on Tuesday, December 19, 2006 by Reuters
Iraq on Brink of Becoming Failed State: Report
by Ross Colvin

Radical action is needed to save a "hollowed-out and fatally weakened" Iraqi state and ease violence that a new Pentagon report says is at an all-time high, a prominent think-tank warned on Tuesday.

The report by the Brussels-based International Crisis Group (ICG) said an international effort was needed to prevent Iraq collapsing into a "failed and fragmented state" whose Shi'ite- Sunni Arab conflict could draw in its neighbors in a proxy war.

"Hollowed-out and fatally weakened, the Iraqi state today is prey to armed militias, sectarian forces and a political class that, by putting short-term personal benefit ahead of long term national interests, is complicit in Iraq's tragic destruction."

In a report on Monday, the Pentagon said the Medic Army militia of radical Shiite cleric Montana al-Sadri had replaced al Qaeda as the "most dangerous accelerant of potentially self- sustaining sectarian violence in Iraq". ........

The rest is at: http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/1219-11.htm

[rodeodance]

1. ah, but their economy is booming accoring to Time (or Newsweek)

[MidwestTransplant]

3. For a few it is. They also point out that unemployment is 40-50%

Don't know how they can even say it's booming. Why not just say a few people are making lots of money.

[GliderGuider]

10. That's because it's based on the production of IEDs

That's the only booming noise their economy is making...

[sinkingfeeling]

2. United States of America is edging closer to a failed state as well.

[kenny blankenship]

4. Not to take anything away from Bush, but

let's not forget that the sanctions regime laid the groundwork for all of this. Political forces acting on both parties, between the parties, and in the media demanded that we keep kicking Iraq until the stuffing came out. Oh, but we had to completely disarm Saddam Hussein. Yeah and that was Bush's excuse too. At 80% disarmament could we not have let up--at least to let the country trade normally? Couldn't we have had a second thought about the wisdom of our actions--not to say mercy--knowing the toll that economic sanctions were having on the country? At 70% disarmament was Saddam Hussein a threat to this country? Give me a fucking break. We could would never let Iraq up off the ground where we had pinned it with a boot on its throat. Relenting even slightly on Iraq would mean reversing the policy of "getting tough with Saddam", and no matter how times other countries begged us to consider it, US domestic politics laughed the very idea away. Nobody wanted to be seen as soft on Iraq. Indeed, deliberately promoting instability in Iraq was one of the arguments raised in support of NOT lifting the sanctions. Well, we got that instability we worked so long to achieve and now Iraq is like a bomb we've strapped to our own chest. In the progress of its regional foreign policy, the United States has acted the role of Walter Sobchak in the movie The Big Lebowski, enforcing, under a self-grant of authority, what he sees as the letter of the law, to the point where he pulls a gun on a friend over a dispute about whether some other guy's foot slid over the line in a bowling match. Later, trying to lay down the law on a kid Walter believes has the money that he and "the Dude" have siphoned off a ransom scheme, Walter takes a bat to a parked car which he guesses the kid bought with the pilfered ransom money. It turns out to be someone else's car and Walter is lucky to escape with his life. In Lebowski the carnage of unintended consequences is mostly comic and ludicrous, however one of Dude's and Walter's bowling team dies as the indirect result of their misadventures. In Iraq, the unintended consequences are just carnage--brutal and horrific and painted on a canvas as epic in scale as the fictional consequences of Lebowski were ludicrous and small. Now it has begun to appear inevitable that those real-world consequences will include the tragic death of a nation state--and this story may not even be halfway over.

[The Stranger]

8. I am afraid that the blowback from this will last generations.

And in that, the fundamentalist Satanic "Christian" generals are correct, although it is the result of their own actions.

[rocktivity]

5. Runnerup for this year's "You Call This NEWS?" Award

If this their idea of being on the brink, I'd hate to see their idea of over the top. And it would help enormously if Bush stopped insisting that Al Qeada is playing a major role in this.

:headbang:
rocknation

[semillama]

6. Montana al-Sadri? The Medic Army?

someone at commondreams.org needs a better editor - spellcheck is no substitute.

[saigon68]

7. LOL Montana al-Sadri

THE "BIG GUY" in person

[llmart]

9. Well, Bush has failed at everything else he ever did..........

so add nation building to his list.