U.S. Planners Surprised by Strength of Iraqi Shiites

Washington Post ^ | 04/23/03 | Glenn Kessler and Dana Priest

[dirtboy]

I have the feeling that Iraq is going to be separated into three distinct areas, all with dissimilar governmental structures. Geographically I don't quite know how it will be managed, but the largest and most contentious consideration will obviously be how to divide up the oil wells and wealth. At this point a unified Iraq looks like a pipe (line) dream.

I think that Iraq will continue to exists but as confederation with a fairly weak central government, as the Shiia and Kurdish areas will have both autonomy and oil.

[NV_Chuck]

Washington Post lost a lot of it's credibility in the past two months. This should wipe out whatever is left of it.

[Baseballguy]

demand government reform in authoritarian states

Who said that give me a link!

[js1138]

Who said that give me a link!

Don't have a link, but bush and rummy have openly stated that democratic governments do not support terrorism. That should be a clue.

There was also a rather obscure report last week that Aaudi Arabia had "fired" a number of radical clerics for spending too much time preaching about politics rather than religion.

[mikegi]

Remember, the dems are screwed if we don't lose the peace. The BBC reports that only a few hundred of the pilgrims were chanting anti-American slogans.

Of course, the Leftists in the press want to present everything Bush does as a disaster in the making. By the time they're proven wrong by actual events, they've "moved on" to the next phony crisis. Having said all that, we do need to watch for Iranian meddling in Iraq.

[FITZ]

These people are backstabbers.

Maybe it's best to split them all up into different countries ---Kurds, Sunnis, Shiites and whatever else there is.

[secretagent]

I hate to say this , but Ayatollah you so.