Bush’s biggest poll lead over Kerry is in the area of TWAT (The War Against Terrorism). What that has to do with Iraq, I don’t know. But The National Intelligence Council report looks grim, going so far as to suggest that events may lead tro civil war in Iraq.
Will this finally turn the tide of public opinion and start chipping away at Bush’s lead in this one area?
Anyhow, I think those loyal to Bush’s TWAT at this point are impervious to data; there’s little reason to think anything would sway their vote, because any form of “dissent” (meaning, anything contrary to BushCo’s public utterances) is part of a “left-wing conspiracy to undermine the President”.
Swing voters? Who can say. They tend to poll one way and vote another.
But some of the voters you’re describing have relatives serving in Iraq. Some of whom might get killed or injured between now and November. Don’t you think that might sway a few votes?
It’d be better if it were already declassified and dowloaded to my hd. I doubt it’ll be declassified before election day.
If it were, it’d have a hella lot more impact than it will have.
It’ll porb’ly only resonate in the Circle Wonk. Of course, there, these things are already fairly common knowledge. So, it makes little difference there that there’s an ‘official’ declaration about the fan and shit.
CBS reported this evening that the administration was asked, and has no intention of declassifying it. There could be some pressure in that direction if next month’s Iraqi census goes down the tubes. There’s no way for Bush to spin that as Beer and Skittles.
If we can lay off the polemics for a moment, from what I can gather from those parts of the intelligence estimate that have been made public, the consensus of the various intel agencies is that there will be very difficult to restore some sort of civil order in Iraq at best, and that civil war is a very real possibility and a probability if something is not done to restore order pretty damn quick. It may well be that the agencies are a little gun shy after giving an estimate in October 2002 that was solid on Iraq having stock piles of chemical and biological weapons and was on the verge of having nuclear weapons. The event showed that the October estimate was just about as wrong as it could be. Now it is possible that the agencies are hedging their bets and staying away from rosie scenarios just because they were so badly burnt before. They may have also learned that if they are going to tell this administration something it doesn’t want to hear the statement needs to be made in terms that are unmistakable. Patty’s characterization of the report as saying that Iraq is well on its way to hell in a hand basket is close to accurate.
The interesting thing is that the President received the report in July. As far as his public announcements and pronouncements are concerned there is no indication that it has had any impact on him at all. Whether this is self-delusion or an attempt to skate through the election before the electorate wakes up is an open question. It is consistent with the State Department’s request to shift money from Iraqi development to the police / occupation mission. As has been discussed on these boards that effort, the disclosure of the obvious fact that Iraq is not going swimmingly and the late date of the request, has angered even some Republican congressmen.
As far as the election is concerned, I doubt that this disclosure that the swamp is getting deeper and the alligators more numerous will make much difference to the true believers who seem to be willing to follow the President into the quagmire on the strength of the President’s commitment to the course he has marked out, as futile as that course may be. For those of us who thing the administration’s policy is based on a recklessness and fecklessness and a deliberate misunderstanding of the problem and wishful thinking the disclosure doesn’t do any thing but confirm out bias. What the effect of all this will be on the body of voters who will decide this election, the people who are willing to elect a President as if they were voting for homecoming king and the people who are genuinely confused and the people who are repulsed by both the President and Senator Kerry, God only knows. I can only hope that a fair number of those fence sitters, summer soldiers and sunshine patriots will connect the dots before November.
To the “nattering nabobs of negativism”-isn’t that the late Spiro Agnew? Man, for cheap crook from Maryland, that guy could turn a phrase! Maybe the breakup of Iraq is not a bad thing…consider the following:
-Iraq (as a nation) was a creation of the British (and Versailles). It has no legitimacy (the King was murdered by aBaathist mob in 1958)!
-The three main ethnic groups (Shia, Sunni, Kurd) hate eachother and have long-standing grievences against eachother.
-most of the counry (except the fertile “crescent” between the Tigris ands Euphrates Rivers is barren desert.
-the invasion of Iraq has destroyed the Iraqi Army, whichw was the only force capable of holding the mess together.
So why not rezone the place and set up three ocuntries? As long as the oild keeps flowing, who really cares? The Kurds can have an independent state, and the Shias can flog themselves bloody all they want!
Why is 1919 and the ramblings of Sykes-Picot of any relevance today?
~60%. Which is technically most, but not by a lot. In addition to the irrigated lowlands and what remains of the southern marsh, the highlands are also not particularly deserty.
Because untangling the “Sunni center” is virtually impossible for one thing - the population is mixed, with very large Shi’a minorities in Baghdad in particular. Also unless federated with the other two chunks, its economy would be rather weak, lacking the oil resources of the north and south.
The Kurdish zone would be the easiest to split off, as it is already halfway there. But even if Turkey were willing to tolerate such an event ( and some suggest they might if the alternatives are unpalatable enough, though it certainly isn’t their favorite option ), the issue of the Turkmen, Assyrian, and especially recently settled Arab minorities might create real problems. They already have in Kirkuk, which is the political key to the northern region. This has the potential to disrupt your smooth flow of oil from the north.
The Shi’a south is by contrast extremely disorganized and a power struggle between ‘Sadrists’, SCIRI, and other factions could paralyze the area. In addition the Saudis devoutly fear the destabilizing influence of a Shi’a majority state ( stable or not ) contiguous with their oil-rich, Shi’a majority northeastern province ( and Saudi Shi’a are near-unanimous in following Sistani as a source of emulation ). Not only could you have disruption in southern Iraq’s oil flow, but Saudi Arabia’s as well.
About the only neighboring country that stands to gain much by fragmentation is Iran. Almost everybody else would be more vulnerable, one way or another ( this also includes the U.S., both in terms of the political hit from perceived failure and the potential/likliehood for increased regional instability ).
SimonX dug up this very nice analysis, which is worth reading ( pdf format ):
Nitpick: Actually, the term “Fertile Crescent” traditionally has been used to refer to the whole crescent-shaped swath of (relatively) fertile and non-desert lands extending from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean – all of Mesopotamia, Syria, Lebanon and Palestine.
Is there an actual Shi’ite secessionist movement in the Northeastern Province of SA? You imply that but don’t make it clear.
Pop psychology is nonsense but I can’t escape the feeling that GW shows a lot of the earmarks of someone who was over-criticized early on. Nothing is ever his fault or responsibility it’s either ignored or blamed on the CIA.
Not terribly active, no. But the potential exists, especially given persistent Saudi harassment of the Shi’a minority ( Iraq and SA were almost mirror images of each other in that respect ). The Najaf theological establishment ( currently headed by Sistani ) dominates the religious life of the SA Shi’a community, which has precious little independent theological status of its own due to Wahhabi repression. So the worry is that a Shi’a state in southern Iraq would start spreading its influence south across the border and help jumpstart secessionism ( or at least breed greater discontent ). For that matter a Shi’a dominated federal Iraq will present some of the same worries.
For the Saudi government, caught between the rock of the Wahabi religious establishment’s loathing of the Shi’a and the hard place of a newly dominant Shi’a religious establishment feeling its oats for the first time since the final Ottoman conquest of the area, the danger is acute.
Would you mind helping me to see this? The CNN article linked in the OP simply suggests that the situation could range from " …at best – the situation would be tenuous in terms of stability…" to “*At worst, the official said, were “trend lines that would point to a civil war.” *” This does not seem to me to indicate any probabilities either way. Simply that the best is not optimal and the worst is dismal.
I appreciate your attempt to remove the polemics. If you could help me with any further insight into the report I would appreciate that as well.
You know, from the perspective of an outsider/infidel, it appears that Wahabbi fudamentalists and Shi’ite fundamentalists have more in common than separates them. Both are devoted to a radical, puritanical vision of traditionalist Islam as the ruling force in society, and they share a common hatred of Western secularism. Why are they enemies? Why don’t they join forces? The original split between the Sunni and Shi’a was over who should be Caliph, and what does that matter nowadays? Nobody has even claimed the title since the Ottoman Sultanate was abolished.
It might be a bit like asking the Lutherans and Catholics to join forces against the Ottomans in the 16th Century. Not even a common threat can bridge some schisms.
I eagerly await all the people who think the Plame affair to have been so important to come into this thread insisting that an investigation be started to determine who leaked this classified information to the Times. I further eagerly await all those who castigated the CIA over it’s errors regarding Iraq’s WMD program progess to caution that this report needs to be treated with some, well, caution.
I’m not dumb enough to hold my breath or anything like that but I’m eagerly awaiting nonetheless, as I have high confidence that the level of intellectual honesty is higher on this board than on other message boards.
Actually, where are the Brutuses and Sam Stones of this board to provide us with some insight as to how they will interpret this news to prove that we need Bush more than ever?