Consider,the worst case scenario for an insurgency would be full Sunni- Shia unit, which the Fallujahs working with al-Sadr were the best example. If Iraq can not be subdued with all this firepower and 'free' (meaning rigged)market sell offs, they can be conquered by splitting them up and then sharing rule with cooperative elements over a weak federation. If Allawi (the ex-Baathist)can't get a secular Shia Iraq, he'll settle for a US-protected 60% and most all the oil. The Kurds are delusional about oil in the N. of Iraq (oil would probably have to to 100 dollars a barrel before the clapped out north started looking good again), but they have the US, Israel, some of Iran behind them and the hope for pipelines (somewhat like Karzai's Afghanistan).
So the attack on Fallujah was played out for the homefront in the US, and it was shown in a limited way to Iraqis with this emphasis: See, this time, the Shia didn't even say anything when we put the Saddam holdouts and foreign Zarqawi fighters in their graves. I think only the Americans can actually believe such incredible lies, but many Iraqis who might emotionally support the insurgency have to be thinking about problems in Sunni-Shia unity while looking at all that physical ruin of their country. Of the leadership figures among the Shia I see in the western media, only al-Sadr seems like a genuine anti-Iranian, anti-US Shia Iraqi nationalist.
I do see some hope. I think we are being lied to about the nature of the insurgency. I believe it significantly consists of Sunni, Shia and even some Kurdish (types who are co-religionists of the Sunni) who are all Iraqi nationalists.
But the US's fallback is still to keep the insurgency disunited and use the civil war scenario to justify their presence in a physically ruined Iraq for the next 10 years easily. Meanwhile oil producers and oil futures gamblers are just loving it, as is that section of corporate America that relies heavily on federal contracts. It's a strange sort of pillage of Iraq. Iraq lies in ruins, Iraqi oil gone from the world market helps raise the price of oil, and the 'wealth' that is pillaged directly comes from the ability of the US federal government to create it with deficit spending. Utlimately, though, the plan is for Iraq and its oil to pay for it, when the national security state is no longer on a war footing. An Arab 'democracy' with occupied Germany and Japan as the model. Or perhaps a divided one, like S. Korea. If not that, the Americans are getting the world ready for another Algeria.
F
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