And now…  the winning entries in the Watcher’s Council vote for this week are High Noonan by Big Lizards, and Interview With Todd Bensman by View From a Height.  Thanks to everyone for all the great entries this week…  I’m……

The winning entries in the Watcher’s Council vote for this week are High Noonan by Big Lizards, and Interview With Todd Bensman by View From a Height.  here is where you can find the full results of the vote. Here……

First off…  any spambots reading this should immediately go here, here, here,  and here.  Die spambots, die!  And now…  the winning entries in the Watcher’s Council vote for this week are High Noonan by Big Lizards, and In…

First off…  any spambots reading this should immediately go here, here, here,  and here.  Die spambots, die!  And now…  here are all the links submitted by members of the Watcher’s Council for this week’s vote. Council li…

With the deep divisions that exist inside Iraq that we cannot heal, my idea was to disengage our troops to a large degree, but to still be there in numbers sufficient to the tasks I have stated previously, especially keeping bloodshed down between Sunni and Shiite, protecting the borders and oil., and defending ourselves. If there is to be a common government in Iraq, it will be formed by Iraqis, not the US, in my opinion, so they need the space and time to sort that out–or not. If such a joint government cannot be formed and cannot show success in managing the national situation, there will come a time for us to simply leave them to their fate, with due warning to them all.

I still believe that managing the oil revenue sharing and protecting the oil infrastructure is key for us, but this is not on, I believe, because we would then undercut the current Iraqi government completely and be back to square one, with loss of credibility. Unless, of course, we could persuade them that we would be an honest broker and distribute their revenue fairly to all, since they can’t seem to do it for themselves, and they do want us to stay around for a time…

Then comes the Iranian affair to the front, with some sort of shouting match kind of showdown with us over their potential nukes taking place, perhaps as early as August, or September, 07. What follows after that, will be up to Bush and Cheney.

“When some US spokesmen recently pointed to Iranian delivery to Sunni IEDs this is – I infer – mere US propaganda: preparation of the assault on IraN.”

Your assumption that Iran might pass nuclear weapons to AlQaeda suprises me.

The Iranian regime is Shiite, it neither supports the Sunni resurgency in Iraq nor would it support in any way their lethal Sunnite enemy AlQaeda - themselves sworn adversaries of all Shiite heretics.

AlQaeda wages a cruel civil war against Iraqi Shiism.

Iran helped to destroy the Taliban regime in Afghanistan.

The Shiite regime in Iran would prefer a compromise with the USA to any alliance and compromise with AlQaeda.

When some US spokesmen recently pointed to Iranian delivery to Sunni IEDs this is - I infer - mere US propaganda: preparation of the assault on Iraq.

Iran does NOT help the Sunni resurgency in Iraq, instead it supports the Shiite allies of the USA there to prevail against the Sunni resurgents.

If the Sunni resurgency prevailed and reconquered Iraq, this would mean a severe defeat for Iran: a come-back of the arch-enemy.

Iran therefore has her interest on the side of a US-Shiite success against the Sunni (Baathist and Salafi) warriors. AFTER, only AFTER such a victory the Shiites could turn against the US occupation force.

In anticipation of a war with Iran the USA is already shifting support gradually toward some groups of the Sunni resurgency - provided they also fight against AlQaeda. That is what we see in Anbar province, in Baquba right now.

A good development, by the way. AlQaeda comes between three hammers, a Shiite, an American and a non-AlQaeda Sunni one.

But in case of a war with Iran USA will completely side with the Sunni Iraqis (Baathist and Salafi), I suppose … those who right now deploy most of the IEDs that kill US soldiers …

This adds to the complexity of the situation mightily. The one possible change, therefore, could be allowing the sale of oil to China, or Russia, but not allowing the import of refined products, if even that is possible, considering the pipeline developments underway between Russia, Iran, and eventually China. There are undoubtedly great risks in this factor.

As to the shutdown of the Gulf by Iran, I have two reactions. It cannot be total, since they have to sell their oil. but if they try that, we can interdict their vessels. So, no Iranian oil to market. The second reaction is that the US Navy would strive to put Iranian missile launch sites out of action by air attack, and there would be special forces actions on the ground to find, fix, and destroy them as well.
So in my opinion, for them to close the gulf would be to either deny themselves revenue, or to expose their weapons systems to full precision-weapon attack. Their choice.

The threat we see from the Iranian nuclear weapons developments is quite clear. Beyond acting as a defensive shield for Iran, such weapons would be eagerly received by AQ, passed to them in secret by Iran. This is entirely in accord with the Iranian support for terrorist organizations worldwide, and gives them a denial capability in case of AQ use of such weapons on us. One must admit the horror of an AQ armed with nukes. It would put our major cities under the threat of total destruction. (We may see this anyway if Pakistan turns around, which is yet another major issue.)

The mindset of Mullahs is not something I would bet on to be rational, either. We made the mistake of ignoring the threats of OBL, and got death and destruction for our lack of attention. Likewise, the collective mindset of the Iranian population is not exactly what I would want to rely upon to help the peace process in the ME.

We have practiced a multilateral approach to Iran, and to the NK as well, for over 4 years. We stood aside (as the bad boy)to allow the UK, Germany, and France(as the good boys) to attempt to solve the nuclear question in Iran. They have produced exactly one thing–sufficient delay and obscurantism for the Iranians to proceed at great speed to produce weapon grade material. When do we stop talking while allowing the Iranians to complete a cache of nuclear bombs for use by AQ?

As I said in my earlier post,perhaps obscurely,significant augmentation of the forces is not politically possible as things stand. It will require far more provocation than we have seen so far to open the closed minds we have here and elsewhere. We will have to wait, perhaps, for the loss of one or two of our cities, and a million of our citizens, before we will respond adequately.

Unless, of course, Bush and Cheney live up to their threats, which places us back to the beginning of this discussion.

One sees many, many ostriches these days.