13 Nov 2006

The Partition of Iraq taking shape

"Democratic leaders in the Senate vowed on Sunday to use their new Congressional majority to press for troop reductions in Iraq within a matter of months, stepping up pressure on the administration just as President Bush is to be interviewed by a bipartisan panel examining future strategy for the war." Link to Democrats Push for Troop Cuts Within Months - New York Times

"Democrats called for an international conference composed of representatives from all the countries in the region with a stake in the outcome -- including Iran, Syria and Turkey -- to hash out details of a solution.
That concept was endorsed Monday by the prime ministers of two other nations with troops in Iraq as part of the U.S.-led coalition, Britain and Australia, according to The Associated Press."
(Full story on CNN)

On Spacewar "Iraq Partition Becomes Fashionable Policy In Washington"
by Martin Sieff, UPI Senior News Analyst, Washington (UPI) May 02, 2006
" Partitioning Iraq has become a new, fashionable policy in Washington, but it would easier said than done. The idea has been gathering steam in various think tanks over the past year and it took center stage this weekend when Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, advocated it." More here

 On 31 October 2006 "Prince Turki al-Faisal (Saudi Arabia's ambassador to Washington) on Monday cautioned against the notion of splitting the war-scarred nation into three sectors for Kurds, Shia and Sunnis.
To envision that you can divide Iraq into three parts [Sunni, Shia and Kurds] is to envision ethnic cleansing on a massive scale, sectarian killing on a massive scale and the uprooting of families."
  More here

Already in 2004 Slate Magazine wrote: "Iraq is not salvageable as a unitary state." So writes Peter Galbraith, America's pre-eminent Kurdophile, in the May 13 New York Review of Books ("How To Get Out of Iraq"). Leslie Gelb, formerly an assistant secretary in Jimmy Carter's State Department and subsequently a diplomatic correspondent for the New York Times, made a similar point on the Times op-ed page in November. Ralph Peters, a retired Army lieutenant colonel who writes on military strategy, has been calling for the breakup of Iraq for nearly a year. Reluctantly, Chatterbox is starting to think Galbraith, Gelb, and Peters have a point."

So Americans are made ready for this already from the start of the war. Like PurEnergy writes: "It’s time to call it quits on Iraq. No, I don’t mean that it’s time to bring the troops home in defeat, but to call it quits on Iraq as a viable nation-state. As vividly illustrated by the Golden Mosque bombing and its bloody aftermath, sectarian violence in Iraq has become increasingly bitter, savage and sadistic. It seems that the country is in the midst of a bourgeoning civil war, and our troops are caught in the middle." more 

There is even a whole site about Partition Iraq among its neighbors