Posted 7/18/2007 05:50:00 PM by Douglas

Imagine that?!? A country that was never even a country, ethnically, would break up into ethnic lines if the Department of Defense would stop bombing them.

If U.S. combat forces withdraw from Iraq in the near future, three developments would be likely to unfold. Majority Shiites would drive Sunnis out of ethnically mixed areas west to Anbar province. Southern Iraq would erupt in civil war between Shiite groups. And the Kurdish north would solidify its borders and invite a U.S. troop presence there. In short, Iraq would effectively become three separate nations.

That was the conclusion reached in recent "war games" exercises conducted for the U.S. military by retired Marine Col. Gary Anderson. "I honestly don't think it will be apocalyptic," said Anderson, who has served in Iraq and now works for a major defense contractor. But "it will be ugly."

I am shocked, SHOCKED to learn that three different groups of people that have only been subjugated into a nation-state by Europeans would want to form smaller groups of their own. But for the real shocker in this one, you gotta go to the Commander in Chief:

For Bush, however, that is the primary risk of withdrawal. "It would mean surrendering the future of Iraq to al-Qaeda," he said in a news conference last week. "It would mean that we'd be risking mass killings on a horrific scale. It would mean we'd allow the terrorists to establish a safe haven in Iraq to replace the one they lost in Afghanistan." If U.S. troops leave too soon, Bush said, they would probably "have to return at some later date to confront an enemy that is even more dangerous."

Forgive me for paying attention for the past five years, but how is that different from what has already happened? Over 3,600 dead Americans and at least 70,000 dead Iraqis and Al Qaeda wasn't in Iraq before the 2003 invasion. But why bother? Forty percent of Americans still think that Saddam Hussein had a connection with 9/11.