[lbo-talk] ooops

[joanna bujes]

>U.S. Planners Surprised by Strength of Iraqi Shiites
>By Glenn Kessler and Dana Priest
>
>Washington Post Staff Writers
>Wednesday, April 23, 2003; Page A01
>
>As Iraqi Shiite demands for a dominant role in Iraq's future mount, Bush
>administration officials say they underestimated the Shiites'
>organizational strength and are unprepared to prevent the rise of an
>anti-American, Islamic fundamentalist government in the country.
>
>The burst of Shiite power -- as demonstrated by the hundreds of
>thousands who made a long-banned pilgrimage to the holy city of Karbala
>yesterday -- has U.S. officials looking for allies in the struggle to
>fill the power vacuum left by the downfall of Saddam Hussein.
>
>As the administration plotted to overthrow Hussein's government, U.S.
>officials said this week, it failed to fully appreciate the force of
>Shiite aspirations and is now concerned that those sentiments could
>coalesce into a fundamentalist government. Some administration officials
>were dazzled by Ahmed Chalabi, the prominent Iraqi exile who is a Shiite
>and an advocate of a secular democracy. Others were more focused on the
>overriding goal of defeating Hussein and paid little attention to the
>dynamics of religion and politics in the region.
>
>"It is a complex equation, and the U.S. government is ill-equipped to
>figure out how this is going to shake out," a State Department official
>said. "I don't think anyone took a step backward and asked, 'What are we
>looking for?' The focus was on the overthrow of Saddam Hussein."
>
>Complicating matters is that the United States has virtually no
>diplomatic relationship with Iran, leaving U.S. officials in the dark
>about the goals and intentions of the government in Tehran. The Iranian
>government is the patron of the Supreme Council for the Islamic
>Revolution in Iraq, the leading Iraqi Shiite group.
>
>Since the Iranian revolution in 1979, a major strategic goal of the
>United States has been to contain radical Shiite fundamentalism. In the
>1980s, the United States backed Hussein as a bulwark against Iran. But
>by this year, the drive to topple Hussein -- who had suppressed Iraq's
>Shiite majority for decades -- loomed as a much more important objective
>for the administration.
>
>U.S. intelligence reports reaching top officials throughout the
>government this week said the Shiites appear to be much more organized
>than was thought. On Monday, one meeting of generals and admirals at the
>Pentagon evolved into a spontaneous teach-in on Iraq's Shiites and the
>U.S. strategy for containing Islamic fundamentalism in Iraq.
>
>The administration hopes the U.S.-led war in Iraq will lead to a
>crescent of democracies in Iraq, Iran, Syria, Lebanon, the
>Israeli-occupied territories and Saudi Arabia. But it could just as
>easily spark a renewed fervor for Islamic rule in the crescent,
>officials said.
>
>"This is a 25-year project," one three-star general officer said.
>"Everyone agreed it was a huge risk, and the outcome was not at all clear."
>
>full: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A17886-2003Apr22.html
>
>--
>
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