"...for the spirit of the American republic..."
Secretary of State Collin Powell, who is on record for blaming the invasion on pro-Israel "crazies" in the Pentagon and the White House, told a Senate committee last week that bringing stability to Iraq "is not impossible". That is putting it very optimistically, given the grim reality of security evaporation throughout Iraq these days, indicating a reasserted "insurgency" once dismissed out of hand by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld as "desperate dead-enders" or "isolated terrorists".
There is, sadly, a huge prospect that no one will win in Iraq, that the quagmire will linger on, more people will die, and more "sitting duck" occupying soldiers, while Iraq's pipelines continuously get sabotaged and precious resources are laid to waste, emboldening those who dream of Iraq's partition. In this nightmare scenario, the only potential winner is Israel, which pushed hard for the invasion through its allies in Washington and the nation's think-thanks, and which seemingly thrives on the world's perpetual distraction with Iraq while its government continues with its iron-fist, expansionist unilateralism, both tacitly and openly backed by the White House and the US Congress. Yet the more Israel presses on this war-mongering course of action, trampling on the Palestinians' rights, the more entrenched, and deep-seated, the Arab and Muslim hatred of Israel, and by association the US government, and thus the deeper the wound of the Iraq crisis pegged on to the Arab-Israeli conflict directly and indirectly, notwithstanding the Israeli army's role in training prison interrogators in Iraq in "mild methods of torture", which is sanctioned in Israel's own laws.
Kaveh L. Afrasiabi/Asia Times 17.Sep.04
