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Iraq Assessments: Insurgents Not Giving Up (D'oh!)
EFLThe recapture of Fallujah has not broken the insurgents' will to fight and may not pay the big dividend U.S. planners had hoped — to improve security enough to hold national elections in Sunni Muslim areas of central Iraq, according to U.S. and Iraqi assessments. Instead, the battle for control of the Sunni city 40 miles west of Baghdad has sharpened divisions among Iraq's major ethnic and religious groups, fueled anti-American sentiment and stoked the 18-month-old Sunni insurgency. OK, I get it. The "insurgency" was less energetic while Fallujah remained a sanctuary, anti-American sentiment was on the wane, and Iraq's ethnic and religious groups were happy, trusted each other, and were working together seamlessly. The conquest of Fallujah also failed to cure cancer or end poverty in Haiti, according to reports. Those grim assessments, expressed privately by some U.S. military officials and by some private experts on Iraq, raise doubts as to whether the January election will produce a government with sufficient legitimacy, especially in the eyes of the country's powerful Sunni Muslim minority. (jaw drops) Hmmm, "sufficient legitimacy". Would that be the sort of "sufficient legitimacy" to garner UN recognition -- say, like the regimes in North Korea and Cuba have? Oh, that's right, "sufficient legitimacy" in the eyes of "the country's powerful Sunni Muslim minority." Wait -- I believe there was an invasion, and the "powerful Sunni Muslim minority" had its ass removed from power, which it had used to commit genocide, perform medieval acts of repression and depravity, and steal the country blind. But these folks have a point -- I mean, if the elections lack "sufficient legitimacy" among Sunnis, there's no telling what they might do. They might even engage in armed rebellion or -- oh, wait ... Even before the battle for Fallujah began Nov. 8, U.S. planners understood that capturing the city, where U.S. troops are still fighting pockets of resistance, was only the first step in building enough security to allow the election to take place in the volatile Sunni areas north and west of Baghdad. So the premise of the article is false? Thanks for self-fisking, you idiots. Posted by: Verlaine 2004-11-18 |
| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=49154 |