The Looming Nightmare

WASHINGTON — A much anticipated US intelligence report warned yesterday that the rising violence in Iraq could permanently tear the country apart and, in the worst case, create a state of anarchy with no legitimate authority that combines "extreme ethnosectarian violence with debilitating intragroup clashes."

The secret National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq, the first in more than two years, said Iraqi-on-Iraqi violence now far outpaces the anti-US insurgency.

from the Boston Globe

Could the fact that we are so darn good at keeping those "Top Secret" reports and documents secret be a symptom or a contributing factor to the fact that the most powerful military in the history of the human race is getting smeared over the streets of Iraq by a rag-tag gaggle of demented turbaned fanatics?

As time passes and the death toll of innocents rises (including the tricked, trapped and betrayed GI’s) a partition of the country into three independent enclaves is becoming more and more a viable and attractive alternative. In the mainstream press, it has moved up the list of options, from an unthinkable disaster to the least of an evil list of possibilities. Of course, it is attractive only in comparison to the alternatives. The globe story continues:

The report by President Bush’s top intelligence analysts said that if the violence continues to get worse, there are three possible outcomes: The country will disintegrate into three separate enclaves (Sunni, Shi’ite, and Kurdish), a strongman will seize power, or anarchy will set in, bringing with it "the greatest potential for instability."

As usual, the mainstream press refuses to look beyond the next turn in the road. The real risk of a power vacuum in Iraq is the Horror Next Door. There is a very real possibility, which the Dowbrigade believes to be a probability, that when we withdraw Iraq will quickly become a wholly owned and operated subsidiary of the Revolutionary Council of Iran.

In addition to the direct threat of a radical Islamic state close to going nuclear, Iran represents the seed of a Greater Islamic Republic (Empire), the common aspiration of the Ayatollahs, Usama bin Laden, Al-Queda, the Muslim Brotherhood, and fundamentalists around the world.

What that eventuality, a nuclear-armed Empire of almost a billion Muslims, in control of the majority of the world’s oil reserves and dedicated to opposing the American agenda and the destruction of Israel, would mean for the United States staggers the imagination, and is uncomfortable to contemplate. Developing contingency plans would be a nightmare.

But we sure hope someone at the State Department is working on it.