What will happen in Iraq after U.S. goes?
Debate grows on impact of troop reduction or pullout

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.”

To be sure, the “it will be ugly” part is so far, the most correct line of this article…

The military has ‘think tank’ capabilities that go way beyond their published sources, the military can and does plan, with extreme precision, what, when, where and how missions and various tasks will take place, and their planning is pretty tight too, right down to how many rounds of ammunition and the number of MRE’s it’s going to take to accomplish any given task, so when military commanders and think tank advisers get down to business and provide you with a graphic probable likelihood scenario similar to this story, it generally a pretty wise move to listen to what they have to say…

In making the case for a continued U.S. troop presence, President Bush has offered far more dire forecasts, arguing that al-Qaeda or Iran — or both — would take over Iraq after a “precipitous withdrawal” of U.S. forces. Al-Qaeda, he said recently, would “be able to recruit better and raise more money from which to launch their objectives” of attacking the U.S. homeland. War opponents in Congress counter that Bush’s talk about al-Qaeda is overblown fear-mongering and that nothing could be worse than the present situation.

And I still say, the statements by Pres. Bush concerning Iraq withdrawal and the terrorists following us here and attacking the American people on our soil is nothing more than fear mongering by the Bush administration and done so in an effort to justify Mr. Bush’s venture to Iraq, a venture that I, and many others, still believe was a personally motivated move, driven by a burning desire for vengeance against Saddam and not at all connected to U.S. security…

Again I am going to point this out, and if you’re a thinking individual you should see exactly why I am so adamant on this, HOW are the terrorists going to follow us HERE?? If our national security level is in proper posture, if our immigration and Border Patrol people are fully funded, fully manned and doing their jobs, HOW is al-Qaida, or any other terrorist organization going to follow us here??

They’re NOT going to follow us here, not in the sense Mr. Bush would have you cower in fear and believe, if we’re going to be attacked by terrorists, in all probability those terrorists are already here, living among us and waiting for their orders or a proper time to attack and kill Americans in their homeland…

And if all of our national security and immigration and Border Patrol folks WERE fully manned and allowed to DO their jobs, we wouldn’t have a gaping hole in our defense, Mr. Bush is using the fear of they’ll follow us here to deflect attention from the U.S. borders and coastlines that aren’t secured, the borders where all you have to do is walk across and voila, you’re here…

Follow us here is nothing more than a deflection tactic Mr. Bush employees to try and make folks like me not criticize, and graphically illustrate his failure to secure THIS nation before he traipses off to Iraq to BUILD another nation…

Some military officers contend that, regardless of whether Iraq breaks apart or outside actors seek to take over after a U.S. pullout, ever greater carnage is inevitable. “The water-cooler chat I hear most often . . . is that there is going to be an outbreak of violence when we leave that makes the [current] instability look like a church picnic,” said an officer who has served in Iraq.

Going to look like a church picnic in comparison, now that is a great analogy, and very likely a correct assumption, if we pull out of Iraq the Iraqi army and police forces, such as they are, will fall like a house of cards and civil insurrection in Iraq will escalate to the point of being a blood bath, but here’s the thing, no matter how long WE stay in Iraq, that situation will never change, if we stay and keep the peace for another 10 years, as soon as the dirty American swine, the great Satan is gone from their nation, the BIG civil war is on and it will be winner take all…

You don’t go waltzing into a Muslim nation, depose their leader, disband their army and government and then hold an election to install a democracy, not and expect that action to hold…

You can’t change thousands of years of theocratic domination just because you think it’s a good idea, and yes, it IS the right thing to do, from OUR stand point, and I know in my heart that we have many folks in this nation that are filled with good intentions towards Iraq, but I ask myself, are those intentions, our intentions, are they really the right thing for Iraq and her people??

And if we were to begin to pull out of Iraq, in a measured pull out, would the safety of our remaining forces be guaranteed by the Iraq military and police?? Would a seriously smaller American force in Iraq be able to maintain it’s defensive integrity without placing themselves in extreme danger, more than they already are?? I don’t think so, I have long held the belief that we didn’t NEED to go to Iraq to begin with, but what the hell, we’re there, let’s get the job DONE, and as things stand, at this time, we don’t have enough troops on the ground to get that mission accomplished, we need MORE troops in Iraq and a much looser rules of engagement if we expect to come away from this thing with ANY dignity at all…

As much as I would love to see ALL of our troops brought OUT of Iraq right now, we ALL know, unless your name is Murtha, Reid or Pelosi, we KNOW it can’t happen that way, to suddenly pull ALL troops out of Iraq IS a signal of accepted defeat, and we can’t have that either…

I don’t have the answers to this one, I’m not sure if anyone does, it’s hard to put the egg back in the chicken after it’s been laid, and Iraq was so mismanaged, right from the start, that it may well be beyond any redemption…

Full Story Here:
If U.S. exits Iraq, what will happen

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