Financial Times: Report urges Bush to stop treating Iraqis like lab rats, be straight with US

[BurtWorm]

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/7226b4d0-802a-11db-a3be-0000779e2340.html


By Edward Luce in Washington

Published: November 30 2006 04:32 | Last updated: November 30 2006 04:32

The civil war in Iraq is likely to deteriorate significantly over the next few months regardless of which combination of options the Bush administration chooses to exercise, according to a report released by a leading Washington think-tank on Wednesday.

The report, Options for Iraq: the almost good, the bad and the ugly, dismisses as “dishonest” the Bush administration’s claims to have readied more than 100 Iraqi military units for combat, pointing out that the true number is probably less than a third of the Pentagon’s estimate.

It also takes strong issue with the notion that Washington can simply put pressure on Nouri al-Maliki, the Iraqi prime minister, to push harder for conciliation between Iraq’s clashing sectarian groups. It disputes the growing consensus in Washington that the US should press the Maliki government to close down the sectarian militias and forge a reconciliation with the Sunni Arab groups by threatening to withdraw US forces.

“It is not meaningful to blame Iraq for the problems that exist. These are mistakes that we made in nation-building,” said Tony Cordesman, author of the report and one of the most influential analysts of the Iraq civil war, at the Centre for Strategic International Studies. “When you send a bull in to liberate a china shop, to blame the china shop for the broken china seems disingenuous, if not misleading.”

The report says that the only way the US can hope to stabilise Iraq is by coming clean with the American public about the long-term costs, risks and patience that would be entailed in achieving that goal. It urges the Bush administration to listen to the Iraqi government and America’s allies in the Middle East and Europe, rather than continue to treat “26m Iraqis as white rats” in an experiment of transplanting democracy....

[Captain Hilts]

1. That left wing, pink rag! Oh! It's the Financial Times of London! Never mind...nt

[Sapere aude]

2. The 800 lb gorilla in the room, WHO GETS THE OIL? That was the question from the very beginning.

Why don't we speak up about that? Even the neocons have said that if we pull out then the terrorists get the oil. Well that was their fuck up. There never was any guarantee that PNAC would work.