Word: itely
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...Iraq jaunt. And Ambassador Ryan Crocker told me, "The fall of the Maliki government, when it happens, might be a good thing." But replace it with what? The consensus in the U.S. intelligence community is that there's going to be lots of bloodshed, including fighting among the Shi'ites, before a credible Iraqi government emerges. It also seems that the U.S. attempt to build an Iraqi army and police force has been a failure. Some units are pretty good, but most are unreliable, laced with members of various Shi'ite militias. This was clear from my conversations with...
...country's factions in recent days. Last week Maliki, following the refusal of key Sunni leaders to resume participation in the government, called an emergency political summit. Iraqi Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi, one of the last prominent Sunni figures willing to be seen talking to the Shi'ite Maliki, was summoned. So was Kurdish President Jalal Talabani and Shi'ite Vice President Adel Abdel Mahdi as well as Massoud Barzani, president of the northern Kurdish region...
...Iraq, and prepared to use any means to advance their often mutually hostile extremist ideologies. Indeed, just hours after Kouchner's arrival signaled France's return to Iraq, a roadside bomb killed the second important Iraqi provincial official within a week, while a separate attack in a Shi'ite neighborhood of Baghdad claimed 12 lives...
Whether or not the Iranians attack, the timing of the buildup is ominous. Last week, the United States announced that it may list Iran's Revolutionary Guard - a branch of the country's military - as a terrorist organization for supplying explosives to Shi'ite militias in Iraq for use against American soldiers. The statement was part of a growing White House campaign aimed at either intimidating the Iranian regime, or at building a case for an American strike against Iran. In that light, yesterday's shelling is a reminder that Iran has the ability to confront the U.S. not just...
...with the Revolutionary Guards specifically, as the prime source of trouble in its neighborhood. U.S. officials now routinely blame Iran for many of the attacks on U.S. forces inside Iraq - despite limited evidence to back the claim - and accuse it of destabilizing the Iraqi government by supporting radical Shi'ite militia. The Administration also insists that Iran has been working to destabilize the Karzai government in Afghanistan, and accuses it of funneling weapons to the Taliban...