Irak 223

'The US Will Lose War Regardless What it Does'

SPIEGEL: The long awaited results of the "surge" are now in. Has the surge succeeded? Is there reason for optimism in Iraq?
KOLKO: Both United States General David H. Petraeus and US Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker will deliver "progress" reports to Congress on Monday, but the skeptics far outnumber those who believe Bush's strategy in Iraq is succeeding. They will say that Shiite attacks on Sunnis in Baghdad have fallen but they will not add that Baghdad has been largely purged in many areas of Sunni inhabitants and their flight much earlier -- and not the increase in Americans -- is the reason "success" can be reported to Congress. Indeed, most of the administration's statistics have been met with a wave of skepticism.

The Iraq military but especially the political 'benchmarks' that this administration thought so crucial -- and used to justify its 'surge' of 28,500 additional troops -- have, in the opinion of Congress' Government Accountability Office (GAO) report issued at the end of August, not been attained (there are now 168,000 American troops in Iraq, plus roughly half as many civilians). In its unexpurgated, original form, the GAO claimed that only three of the 18 Congressionally mandated "benchmarks" had been reached: violence was as high as ever; reconstruction was plagued by corruption on both the Iraqi and American sides; the Shiites and Sunnis were as disunited as ever, murdering each other; crucial laws, especially on oil, have not been enacted yet; and probably many political changes will never occur, and the like. Of its nine security goals, only two had been met. White House and Pentagon efforts to soften GAO criticisms failed.

SPIEGEL: Who has benefited from the mess?

KOLKO: The situation is worse than ever and the artificial nation -- created after World War I in a capricious manner -- is breaking up. The surge, as one Iraqi is quoted, "is isolating areas from each other ... and putting up permanent checkpoints. That is what I call a failure." The civilian death toll last August was higher than in February. Geopolitically, as Bush senior feared after the first Gulf war in 1990-91, Iran is emerging more powerful than ever, increasingly dominant in the region. The many official Israeli warnings before the war that this would be the outcome of war against Iraq and the removal of Saddam Hussein from power have come true.'

Lees verder: http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=15&ItemID=13746