Who can keep these murderers in check? Who was keeping them in check? Were things in Iraq really THIS bloody before the invasion? CIVL WAR??? holy crap Mr. Bush….this is kinda a 180 from “democracy in the Middle East. Yeah yeah look at Afghanistan and Lebanon, and Morroco and Libya. Good Good. ok, so LOOK at Afghanistan. Look at Libya. LOOK AT IRAN. North Korea? LOOK AT IRAQ. I think Democracy is a wonderful Idea. I am not a facist who thinks my wonderful ideas must be forced on anyone else. The difference between hard and soft power. America has lost most of it’s soft power if you will, that is the ability to attract other by the legitimacy of U.S. policies and the values that underline them. We are in a state of Hard Power, Force. (Donald Rumsfield professes not to even understand the term soft power.) Was George Washingon elected? no, he was a countries war hero. Not an interim president who’s government is ready as soon as he runs out of friends for the buddy system. My point is if you are going to be a real democracy, you can’t have it forced on you. You have to take it yourself. Iran has this chance. Bush recently asked for and recieved 75 million from congress to infiltrate Irans government and promote freedom. Brilliant Idea, in the first or second inning…..we have just sat down for the Seventh Inning Scretch, Hary Cary is Singin Take me out to the Ball Game. Even Though we have been grand slammed on 9-11, Iran is about to go Nuclear, and if you dont know what that means then you are reading this post by mistake, and you can click on Iran link to the right. But still we listen and sing the song, hoping for Georgie and Congress to pull their heads out of their asses. Is it too late?
“If advised the senate is about our weakness, multiply our enemies will” - $
Jim Sinclair’s Commentary
Is this a new discovery for the US intelligence service? All they had to do was listen to King Abdullah of Jordan two years ago and they could have saved a fortune on deep cover operations.
Spy Chief Warns An Iraq Civil War Could Spread
Whole Middle East Could Be Drawn Into Larger Battle if Secterian Violence Spreads
By KATHERINE SHRADER, AP
WASHINGTON (March 1) - A civil war in Iraq could lead to a broader conflict in the Middle East, pitting the region’s rival Islamic sects against each other, National Intelligence Director John Negroponte said in an unusually frank assessment Tuesday.
“If chaos were to descend upon Iraq or the forces of democracy were to be defeated in that country … this would have implications for the rest of the Middle East region and, indeed, the world,” Negroponte said at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on global threats.
Negroponte served as U.S. ambassador to Baghdad before taking over as the nation’s top intelligence official last April.
Iraqis have faced a chain of attacks and reprisals since bombs destroyed the gold dome of a revered Shiite shrine in Samarra last week. Hundreds, if not thousands, have died, including more than 65 who were killed Tuesday by suicide attackers, car bombers and insurgents firing mortars.
President Bush condemned the surge in violence and said Iraqis must make a choice between “a free society or a society dictated … by evil people who will kill innocents.” Later, in an interview with ABC News’ “World News Tonight,” he said he did not believe the escalation of civil unrest would lead to a general civil war.
Negroponte tried to focus on progress in Iraq , but he acknowledged a civil war would be a “serious setback” to the global war on terror.
“The consequences for the people of Iraq would be catastrophic,” he said. “Clearly, it would seriously jeopardize the democratic political process on which they are presently embarked. And one can only begin to imagine what the political outcomes would be.”
Saudi Arabia and Jordan could support Iraq ’s Sunnis, Negroponte said. And Iran, run by a Shiite Islamic theocracy, “has already got quite close ties with some of the extremist elements” inside Iraq , he added.
While Iraq ’s neighbors “initially might be reluctant” to get involved in a broader Sunni-Shiite conflict, “that might well be a temptation,” Negroponte said.
Still, he told senators he is seeing progress in the overall political and security situation in Iraq . “And if we continue to make that kind of progress, yes, we can win in Iraq ,” he said.
Democrats noted that Negroponte wouldn’t go quite as far as Bush did in his January State of the Union address. “We are winning,” Bush said then.
James Jeffrey, the State Department coordinator for Iraq , told reporters Tuesday that Iraqi security forces have managed to establish a normal and calm situation _ “by Iraq standards.” The level of violence, he said, was about the same as before the shrine bombing.
At the Senate hearing, Lt. Gen. Michael Maples, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, painted a similarly stark picture of Afghanistan. While the government has made progress in disarming private militias, Maples said, his agency estimates that violence from the Taliban and other anti-coalition groups in Afghanistan increased 20 percent last year.
“Insurgents now represent a greater threat to the expansion of Afghan government authority than at any point since late 2001, and will be active this spring,” Maples said in his written statement.
Afghan insurgents increased their suicide attacks almost fourfold and more than doubled their use of improvised explosive devices, he said.
Also at the hearing:
Negroponte would not provide an updated assessment of the number of nuclear weapons believed to be in North Korea’s arsenal, although a former DIA head has previously said Pyongyang has one or two.
“We assess that they probably have nuclear weapons, as they claim that they do, but we don’t know for a fact that they’ve got such weapons,” Negroponte said. To provide a number “would merely be an extrapolation or a speculation on our part.”
