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Politics : Sioux Nation -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: geode00 who wrote (92733)	12/18/2006 7:03:19 PM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 361706

Omissions In the Iraq Study Group Report zmag.org <<...If the US occupation of Iraq ever ends without a reliable client state government in place, it will create the possibility of Washington's worst nightmare - a majority Shiite ruled Iraq allied with Shiite Iran that might link with the Saudi Shias located in the bordering oil-rich part of the kingdom. If that Tripartite Shia Middle East alliance forms, it will control most of the world's oil supply. It might then choose to align with the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) formed to compete with the US for control of Central Asia's huge energy reserves and whose core members are China and Russia giving those countries a chance for a leg up on the US at least for access to Middle East oil. The ISG and Bush administration will do all in its power to prevent this from happening, but the US has lost so much credibility in the region, they face a daunting task and long odds for success. The ISG report mentions none of this, but does stress the importance of Iraq's oil by mentioning it 63 times and calling for the US to help Iraq privatize its state-owned oil industry, opening it up to Big Oil foreign exploitive investment and the profits from it. If or when the US ends its occupation without leaving a reliable client state in place, it would be hard to imagine Iraq will quickly forgive and forget and be willing to conduct business as usual with oil or other corporations from the country that laid waste to it and only left in humiliation and defeat. It shows how hard it will be for the US to get out of this mess, and it's likely to prove more than Jim Baker, his high-powered team, and "all the king's horses and men" are up to. They stand virtually no chance to implement a coherent, workable plan for success short of the only operable one they'll never agree to until they no longer have a choice - a full and unconditional withdrawal. It only remains to be seen how long it will take for them and whatever administration is in power in Washington to draw that conclusion and how much time the public's willing to give them, the Bush administration and the majority Democrats in the Congress elected to chart a new course they've so far indicated no intention of doing. It all adds up to an exercise in deception and futility, but in the end things will end up where they all began in 1990 before the long US assault against Iraq started. When it does, that country will again be free from a foreign occupier but will face a long, expensive and painful struggle to mend and rebuild. As happened when the US left Vietnam, this country will leave it to the Iraqis to recover and regenerate from the carnage and misery on their own that may take a generation or more to achieve and that for most now alive may never be possible. This will be the legacy of the US invasion and occupation and tainted presidency of George Bush and his corrupted notion of moral superiority, claiming to have brought democracy, liberation and the benefits of western civilization to this blighted country but having to do it through the barrel of a gun. This time things unraveled faster than usual, but it only showed the people of Iraq reject what too many at home still believe - that the US is a benevolent democratic republic serving the will and needs of its people and supporting the rights and sovereignty of free people everywhere to live in peace and security. It's an illusion understood by most others around the world and gaining recognition at home as being just as hollow here as on the streets of Baghdad and Kabul. It remains to be seen how long it will take for a mass awakening to occur to arouse the public at home, as it did in Iraq and Afghanistan, making them no longer willing to put up with the kind of abuse and neglect they've so far failed to resist. If history is a guide, it will happen, and when it does it may signal the denouement of another repressive imperial state succumbing to the arrogance of its own overreach, excess, hubris and disregard for the needs of its own people demanding redress. It can't come soon enough for the many around the world oppressed by it crying out "freedom now" and beginning to do something about getting it...>>