Recent War Games Show What Will Really Happen When We Leave Iraq

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.
• 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."


SOURCE:
Seattle Times

Being that Bush keeps preaching on about Iran an Al Queda taking over if we leave Iraq,
I'm glad to see that the military and sane intelligent people are looking at what would actually happen.

It is interesting since the idea of dividing the country into three separate nations has been
proposed as one of the military-political action plans in the past few years, it would seem that
regardless of what we may want, that may well be how things play out.


Comments, Opinions?

I have an uncle who works in Iraq. Three years ago he said two things..

1) Iraq is being prepared to split into 3 major areas.
2) The US military will withdraw when we are done building the permanent military bases there.

Whadya mean it WILL be ugly?

It's ugly already!

Let 'em get to their 3 nations already so we can move on with this sad chapter.

Originally posted by c3hamby
Whadya mean it WILL be ugly?

It's ugly already!

Let 'em get to their 3 nations already so we can move on with this sad chapter.

Too true.

What I want to know is, would it really be such a bad thing if Iraq seperated into 3 seperate provinces/states?????

If you ask me, I think it would actually be a good thing. Theoretically, if this happened, I forsee that there would be less of a "civil war" once things were sorted. Sure, there would be bloodshed and loss of life, but once the 3 seperate "states" had evolved, there would be less infighting between them. Sure, they may be border incursions every now and then, but compared to what we are seeing now, I see less bloodshed and fighting.

And thats my two cents.

Ok in case you guys/girls didn't know this...

The British created the current state of Iraq from 3, yes 3 city-states at the time.

Where have I lived this lie before?

Inventing Iraq- Yet again?


Creating Modern Iraq

Sykes-Picot agreement:



From PBS (Creating Modern Iraq):

Iraq was carved out of the collapsing Ottoman Empire following World War I by a British administration largely focused on protecting its access to a much larger Indian colony and its growing thirst for newly discovered oil reserves. It was a process that has left its imprint on the politics and ethnic quarrels that have wracked the country ever since.

Under the secret 1916 Sykes-Picot Agreement, France and Britain carved up most of the Ottoman territory into spheres of influence, with Britain retaining direct control over most of modern Iraq and having indirect control over the rest of the area, with the exception of Mosul and Kirkuk, which would operate under French control.

How the Kurds were denied a state

The Creation of Modern Iraq: India Office Political and Secret files C. 1914-1921

Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq to 1930

Britain tried first. Iraq was no picnic then

Creation of Iraq 1914-1921 (ok its a book so don't buy it but read the summary anyway)

History of US and UK intervention in 'Iraq'

This pretty much sums up my entire point from the above source:

When the British entered Baghdad in 1917, their commanding officer spoke words that sound eerily familiar today: 'Our armies do not come into your cities and lands as conquerors or enemies, but as liberators.' In reality, the British considered such declarations, never formalized in treaties or binding agreements, as empty promises to be discarded when they were no longer useful. As the head of English intelligence put it, 'Luckily we have been very careful indeed to commit ourselves to nothing whatsoever.'

In fact, the creation of Iraq was shaped not by the needs of the Iraqi people or principles of justice and self-determination, but by the interests and ambitions of British imperialism - to help insure British control of the Middle East for its strategic location at the crossroads between Africa, Asia and Europe, and its vast and oil reserves. The British understood that petroleum was the lifeblood of modern empire - a crucial prop of global power and wealth on many levels: an essential economic input impacting production costs, profits, and competitive advantage; an instrument of rivalry whose control ensured leverage over other powers and the world economy; and a resource crucial for the projection of military power globally.

Take three crucial dimensions of British actions: the creation of Iraq by combining three demographically distinct administrative units of the Ottoman Empire: Basra in the Shi'a south, Baghdad in the Sunni center, and Mosul in the Kurdish north, without regard to the aspirations of their peoples; the drawing of borders to prevent Iraq from becoming a major power in the Persian Gulf; and the institutionalization of a pro-British ruling elite.

So from the ruins of the Turkish Empire, Iraq was created.

It can go back to the dust...Three city states should be standing there right now, instead we have one ridiculous country that shouldn't even exist!



Any questions? If you don't believe me, research it for yourself.


Not only have there been thousands of American deaths, there have been hundreds of thousands of Iraqi deaths.

A team of American and Iraqi epidemiologists estimates that 655,000 more people have died in Iraq since coalition forces arrived in March 2003 than would have died if the invasion had not occurred.

It is more than 20 times the estimate of 30,000 civilian deaths that President Bush gave in a speech in December. It is more than 10 times the estimate of roughly 50,000 civilian deaths made by the British-based Iraq Body Count research group.

The surveyors said they found a steady increase in mortality since the invasion, with a steeper rise in the last year that appears to reflect a worsening of violence as reported by the U.S. military, the news media and civilian groups. In the year ending in June, the team calculated Iraq's mortality rate to be roughly four times what it was the year before the war.

Of the total 655,000 estimated "excess deaths," 601,000 resulted from violence and the rest from disease and other causes, according to the study. This is about 500 unexpected violent deaths per day throughout the country.

So the 'hellhole' mentioned above is really WORSE than we are told/think. Imagine that.

This really makes one wonder what else we're being lied to about huh?

Don't you just love bureacrats...

[edit on 19-7-2007 by biggie smalls]

It would be a geopolitical nightmare.

Iran would see to it that pro-Iranian Shiites controlled the South, geting them extra oil and a border with Saudi Arabia. Remember the reason we were buddy-buddy with Saddam was because he was the only thing standing between the Iranians and the Saudis.

If al Anbar and surrounding provinces didn't fall into Iranian hands it would turn into a failed state. With less oil than its neighbors, being landlocked and surrounded on 3 sides by enemies, a sparsely populated desert with no railways that go into Syria or Jordan on its Western border (there is one rail line that goes to the Syrian border and stops near a remote highway that goes through a poorly populated area of Syria, but the only railways that actually go into Syria and Turkey is far North in Kurdistan).
They might try to blackmail the Southern daughter nation by threatening to dam the rivers, and that would start an arms race unless Iran or someone else got involved first.

Kurdistan would become a heavily militarized state. As middle eastern nations go, the best archtype is probably Israel. Turkey would be at least moderately hostile, Iran would be very hostile if they remained friendly to the US, and Syria wouldn't help them at all because Syria and Iran have important mutual interests. That means that the US would have be entirely dependent on the ability to twist Turkey's arm to support Kurdistan. If Iran went after Kurdistan, Turkey would be free to deny use of its territory and airspace and we wouldn't be able to help at all without starting a larger war against Iran.
This would be an incredibly politically expensive situation to keep stable.

Honestly, if Iraq falls apart, Iran can pretty much take whatever it wants from Iraq and leave the rest of it to rot.

I think something went wrong. I don't think the neocons meant for both Iran and Syria to still be standing when we pulled out of Iraq. If the war in Lebanon had expanded and America had operated against Syria, we'd have gained an avenue through which to support Kurdistan and maintain a deterrent against the territories that Iran might gain influence over. If Iran had fallen, there would be almost nobody to worry about at all- the worst that could happen would be for the middle East, from Syria all the way to Afghanistan, to become to essentially be a power vacuum that Saudi money could control indefinately, and the Saudis would be happy to preside over that chaos for us covertly because it would raise oil prices like nobody's business.

If we do pull out, which we really have to, we have to just accept that we've lost control of the region and wait until somebody turns up who can be the next Saddam- then we'll have to do what we should have been doing with Saddam all along- pressuring him peacefully and offering him strong incentives to behave. That's going to be very hard, because this time, unlike with Saddam, we will have no credible military stick to go with the carrot.

Bush screwed up big time. I don't think most people appreciate just how badly he screwed up. It'll probably be 30 years before we get this straightened out, even if we do everything right.

Bush didn't failed, it was the plan all along. The Pentagon P2OJ plan before the invasion. Create civil war, divide Iraq into 3 parts, use Iraq to launch attack against Iran and Syria. He's doing a perfect job.

As Bush said earlier this week, he will ``solve the iranian crisis`` before leaving office, that means bombing Iran.

The goal of all this is making money by selling arms, place puppets nations, destroying USA's reputation, training US soldiers in Iraq to treat everyone like cattle so when they come back in the US they can be police officers or military doing the police during martial law.

Also, the tiniest a nation is, the easier it is to conquer (exception: Switzerland) and use for imperalistic means. Also, as you pointed out The Vagabond, it will be a nightmare for Iraqis and all the middle-east... that's what the globalists want, war is good for them and their objectives.

[edit on 19-7-2007 by Vitchilo]

What your missing here Vitchello, is that what will an attack on Iran /Syria achieve? At best, they will stir up a hornets nest and further de-stabilize the M.E. At worst the U.S brings in the draft as it tries to occupy Iran, Iraq style and then we just see exactly the same situation as we currently have, with the occupying force slowly beeing bled out of the country.

Either way the Vagabond is right. The M.E will be unstable for decades to come. This too will have wide reaching effects on International Terrorism. Bush sure did screw up.

Unless of course you imply that this is all part of the master plan. i.e NWO kind of police state take over stuff

Originally posted by Vitchilo
Bush didn't failed, it was the plan all along. The Pentagon P2OJ plan before the invasion. Create civil war, divide Iraq into 3 parts, use Iraq to launch attack against Iran and Syria. He's doing a perfect job.

While I agree that is a likely objective, he certainly is not doing a perfect job of it. Bush no longer has time to decisively defeat Iran with the resources at hand. Bombing them won't do it. We'd need ground forces and two solid years to disassemble their military and consolidate control to the point that they couldn't regroup when we left.

At this point, it would take a major strategic nuclear strike on the following sites:

Large cities in the west controlling highways:
Mahabad, Kermanshah, Ilam, Dezful, Ahvaz, Khorramshahr, Abadan, Bandar-e-Emam Khomeyni

Large cities on major arteries through the Zagros Range:
Hamedan, Arak, Khorramabad

Cities harboring major government facilities in the interior:
Tehran, Esfahan, Bandar-e-Abbas

And to keep the government off the back of the Balochs who've been making trouble in the East: Kerman.

That would pretty much paralyze Iran, taking out significant forces as well as command and control resources as well as providing a strong disruption of logistical capabilities for any operations to the West. But there are obvious problems with the idea of nuking virtually every major population center in Iran.

Even with that, all we'd accomplish is to level the playing field for the Iraqi civil war. We'd still have to pave highways through western Anbar away from the population centers and establish bases there to protect them if we had any intention of interacting with Kurdistan.

To really make it all go off without a hitch we'd need Syria too, and in the case of Syria we'd actually have to control the ground, not just destabilize them, because the whole point would be to use their highways and rails to support Kurdistan so that we weren't wholly reliant on the turks, who don't like the Kurds.

It's already a nightmare for the Iraqis. This is also a nightmare for anyone who has an interest in a stable middle east from a geopolitical point of view. It's even a nightmare for neocons.


Edit to remove portions of quote that were not intended to be included in this post.

[edit on 19-7-2007 by The Vagabond]

Perhaps the only way that this could be considered a strategic success is if the plan all along was to let Iran consolidate rule over the whole of Iraq, either in an NWO bid to increase the sphere of influence of China's middle east proxy or in an American bid to allow a future Neo-Con administration to kill two or more birds with one stone.

It's so out there that it can hardly seem true, but on the other hand so out there that nobody would ever suspect it. Invade Iraq, lost, let Iran gain Iraq, let Iran run roughshod over you for a few years, let Iran get nuclear weapons, let Iran go to war with Saudi and Kuwait, come out of nowhere and whip the bejesus out of Iran in a violent war that probably results in Iran nuking several local sites (but not having the capacity to reach Western nations and penetrate any missile defenses that may exist) and for the price of justifying just one war, you earn the right to rebuild (and socially engineer) Iraq, Iran, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia.

That's REALLY thin and I am not suggesting that its the case. I'm just saying that I've got trace amounts of tin foil in my blood and don't find it inconcievable.

Vagabond,
I 100% agree with your assesment of the situation.
I fear that there is now way of handling the current Iraq mess, that doesn't involve serious ethnic clensing, either by forcefully separating the different groups into their own areas or by mass murder of those in a weakest position. This will play out anyway weather USA leaves or stays. And if USA tries to avoid a massive massacare and attempts to divide Iraq into ethnic enclaves, it will be accused of crimes against humanity. If USA leaves Iraq it will be accused of allowing a massacare to happen... Wouldn't want to be in the White House at the moment.


As for the allow Iran to win to gain all middle east plan. It is scaringly possible, just based on the fact that there is no other possible way out of this mess with any gain to the USA or even to the "NWO" (Unless NWO plans to have China - Iran axel in power)

Here's a piccie of a map prepared by Lieutenant-Colonel Ralph Peters in 2006 for the Armed Forces Journal in 2006.

img.scoop.co.nz...

I love the idea of creating 3 unstable states by further destabalising the region by taking land from the neighbouring countries!

What a bloody mess.

I'm sorry but we've created this disaster we shouldn't be allowed to leave until it's sorted out. It sounds callous but we'll be losing alot more soldiers if we stay, but that's war...... and before we forget let's remind ourselves that we started it.

The other solution is to hand Iraq over to Iran, let's just hope they don't decide to take revenge on the Iraqi population for all those gas attacks in the 80's.

Anyway, Iran's got a very youthful population who are becoming exceptionally well educated (this can be clearly seen in the "Brain Drain" occuring from Iran), things will change there...... but these things happen slowly. We're always trying to rush thing and that's the reason we keep *SNIP* up!

Hey, you never know, perhaps Iran will cease to be an Islamic republic, return to Zoroaster and Ahura-Mazda and once again become a regional superpower like it was before those pesky Arabians turned up! Huzzah!

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[edit on 19/7/2007 by Mirthful Me]

I'm assuming no one read my post as you keep mentioning how much Iraq is in shambles.

There wouldn't be the country of Iraq if it weren't for the British. Iraq does not need to exist. Before the 1920s it was part of the Turkish Empire. Before that, the Persian Empire. It can go back to being either one. There is no 'people' of Iraq. There are Kurds and Arabs. It doesn't really sound like either group wants to be part of Iraq anymore. Let the 3 'powers' be their own countries, I've had enough of this crap.

We are not policemen of the world. We shouldn't have any say in how these people govern their own land. It was a huge mistake taking Saddam out. There have been no WMD, no terrorist threats in the US, nothing that was told to us by the corporate owned media and terrorist organization that runs our government.

Take three crucial dimensions of British actions: the creation of Iraq by combining three demographically distinct administrative units of the Ottoman Empire: Basra in the Shi'a south, Baghdad in the Sunni center, and Mosul in the Kurdish north, without regard to the aspirations of their peoples; the drawing of borders to prevent Iraq from becoming a major power in the Persian Gulf; and the institutionalization of a pro-British ruling elite.

Source


Re-read the rest of my post to understand what is really going on here...A destabilization due to the 3 area of power that existed almost a 100 years ago. I won't go so far as to blame the British for the current mess, but they have a hand in it for sure.

Who really wanted to go back, the British or us? Bushie wanted to 'clean-up' daddy's mess, but I think he also had plans to fix the Brits problems in the area...Make it a little more pro-West to send some business back home I bet.


Why do we have ANY say in the middle east? We don't live there, never have, so it should be a non-issue. Terrorism has proved to be a red herring.

Where is this supposed global jihad on the West? If this was true, there'd be terror bombings every day by Muslim extremists.

We have been blatantly lied to time and time again.

Enough, bring our people home.

Let's hold the politicians accountable for all their action/inaction and elect a new government by the people, for the people, of the people.

[edit on 19-7-2007 by biggie smalls]

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[edit on 19/7/2007 by Mirthful Me]

Hi Biggie

All I'm saying is that we've (US and UK) started this little conflict.

The British really screwed alot of stuff up, but that's no excuse for the current state of affairs. We never seem to learn from history.

Much of Iran's mistrust of the west are derived form historical links with Britain. It was a British plan (with CIA help) that overthrew Mossadeq and therefore destroy Iran's only secular democracy.

The creation of three small states, created at the expanse of neighbouring countries is no more than a re-enactment of the British folly. They would end up becoming part of Iran (something I really haven't a problem with).

That map is very odd, since many of those places are'nt part of Iraq, yet seem to exist
in his plan, oh well though.


On a different note, it is quite possible and probable that Iraq would split into three different entities,
be those states or nations, however they don't need to take land from neighbouring countries to do so.

keep dreaming, you'll never get your civil war.

Any war games show what will happen if you stay in Iraq? You'll run out of soldiers.

Originally posted by Tokyo Rose
keep dreaming, you'll never get your civil war.

Whom exactly are you referring to?

Iraq is in the middle of civil war as it is, we're just stuck in the middle of it.

Any war games show what will happen if you stay in Iraq? You'll run out of soldiers.

Actually, in theory, we would'nt, they would run out first, since we kill more than we are killed,
so if the war continued for centuries, the enemy side would run out of soldiers before we did.

Yeah it will get messy as people start drawing the boundaries and who gets what. Certainly the Sunnis will be the losers since they control pretty much nothing in Central and Western Iraq while Kurds control the rich Northern Iraq with vast reserves of oil, while the Shiites will control the South rich in oil. It won't be a civil war anymore if its 3 independent nations now fighting.