Word: arab
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...other day I called an Arab security official in the Gulf and joked with him about how well things are going in Iraq. He wasn't in the mood for irony. "The Iranians and the Shi'a are coming to get us," he said, "and you Americans don't have a clue how to stop them...
...have the perfect record for a party trying to ease voters' concerns about Washington corruption; in the 1980s, he was investigated but not charged in a corruption case where eight members of Congress, including Murtha, were offered money by FBI agents posing as a representatives of a fictitious Arab sheik; ultimately six House members and a Senator were convicted in the investigation...
...heard the same thing from a half dozen other Gulf Arab contacts I talked to the same day. Sure, they're all unhappy about Iraq. But what really concerns them is what happens when the U.S. packs up and leaves. The most likely scenario is an out-and-out civil war, Sunni against Shi'a, with Iran and Saudi Arabia eventually sucked in. And, by the way, can the United States stop Iran from occupying Iraq...
...gloom my Arab contacts see one ray of hope-James Baker, the co-chairman of the Iraq Study Group. Most Gulf Arabs-Sunnis, to be sure-look at Baker as a friend. Baker was the brains behind the U.N.-sanctioned coalition that drove Saddam out of Kuwait. Baker had the sense to leave Saddam in power, knowing full well the alternative was civil war. The Iraq policy Baker put in place in 1992 gave the Gulf eleven years of peace...
...Barney knows that extricating ourselves from Iraq will require cutting some ugly political deals with an assortment of rogues, who might be willing to help stabilize Iraq in return for a piece of the country's future: Sunni Baathist rebels and Shi'ite Islamists, Iranian spooks and Arab strongmen. That, at least, is one option currently under consideration by the Iraq Study Group, the panel headed by former Secretary of State James Baker, whom Rice prodded Bush to appoint in part to clip Rumsfeld's wings...