No Easy Way to Get Out of Iraq

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No Easy Way to Get Out of Iraq

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Arnold de Bourchgrave does a good job of laying out the realities regarding Iraq in this Washington Times piece. The growing American cries to withdraw its forces altogether or to divide Iraq along religious-ethnic grounds (Kurds-Sunni-Shiite) are simplistic on the surface and they portend catastrophic consequences for the U.S., as well as for the Iraq region. The latter includes potential civil wars in neighboring Arab countries, according to Jordan's King Abdullah.

De Bourchgrave points out that many Iraqi cities have sizeable Sunni and Shiite populations, meaning that it's impossible to divide Iraq into truly separate districts. At the same time, there are dozens of private militias - 23 in Baghdad alone, each competing for narrow interests. On the populist theme of declaring the current situation a civil war in Iraq, de Bourchgrave says it is more like a civil war within a civil war.

Unquestionably, Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri would interpret a unilateral withdrawal of American forces at this point as a collapse of American will to fight al-Qaeda by and they will skillfully play it for all the propaganda they can squeeze from it. An American withdrawal would be a recruiting dream for al-Qaeda, boosting their fortunes dramatically - and hence, a loss for the U.S.

 

Yet, to press on is costly - extremely so. De Bourchgrave reports that the dollar cost is $226 million a day or $8 billion dollars per month.

See our sobering assessment of whether the U.S. has reached the tipping point in Iraq in the current World News and Prophecy. Melvin Rhodes wrote, "Will Iraq Be America's Suez?" reflecting on the watershed event having to withdraw from the Suez was for Great Britain in the 1950s. He notes soberly that the Bible shows the United States is absent from the end time geopolitical configuration of the Middle East.

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