Word: cordesman
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...Anthony Cordesman, a security analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, says the U.S. military estimates that al-Qaeda in Iraq - a group thought to number several thousand - accounts for only about 15% of the attacks in Iraq. (Other Sunni groups account for 70%, with Shi'ite militias responsible for the remaining 15%.) But, Cordesman says, those attacks are the most deadly and "probably do the most damage in pushing Iraq toward civil war." At the moment, al-Qaeda in Iraq is valuable to Osama bin Laden and his top deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, even though the links...
...There's merit to the points made by both Petraeus and Satterfield, according to Antony Cordesman, a military strategy expert with Washington's Center for Strategic and International Studies...
...long run, a stable Iraq cannot have extremists in the Mahdi Army act on their own against the Sunnis, the Coalition, or the government," Cordesman told TIME. "In the short run, the key priority for military operations is to build security as soon as possible, avoid unnecessary confrontations with the Mahdi Army and militias [and] focus on active threats, whether Sunni or Shi'ites. This is a search for least bad options that have many conflicting priorities, and the best possible solution is going to be messy, involve contradictory priorities, and force the U.S. to constantly adapt to the realities...
...Does the difference in tone suggest a split within the Bush Administration? Not really, says Cordesman. "I think they are speaking to different constituencies, and with different priorities," he explains. "There is going to be a lot of good cop-bad cop, and tactics vs. strategic rhetoric coming out of U.S. officers and officials simply because that is what their jobs require...
...Cordesman's bleak outlook comes on the heels of a recently released study by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy that warns that democracy is a long way from coming to the southern part of the country. In their report, "The Calm Before the Storm: The British Experience in Southern Iraq," Michael Knights and Ed Williams observe that greater Basra "has suffered one of the worst reversals of fortune of any area in Iraq since the fall of Saddam's regime." Once a cosmopolitan city and the center of Iraq's oil industry, the city - under British control...