…
I can’t definitively inform you, but I can deign to speculate. I think the Israelis, and, by extension, the current U.S. regime wanted to destroy Iraq as a power. Great powers have always sought to destroy rival states, or compromise weaker neighboring states through partition.
…
A partitioned state, besides being a military nullity, is easier to control politically and establish bases in, in case you want the oil money, or want to attack Iran. …

This is a very old game. Let’s wise up to it.

Even now the Repubs are trying to do this to California through it’s electoral votes.

Biodun @ 129

Re: impeachment:

Folks, I hate to break this news, but…it ain’t gonna happen. (Oddmommy @ 98 is right.)

I wonder, Biodun…

the Dem leaders fear the Rethugs more than they fear us.

Can we change that?

The Internet changed that to some extent, but right now that’s not the issue.

We need to wait just a bit to see what the leaders of both parties in Congress do.

Grassroots need to know the lay of the land before committing resources and right now requires just a bit more waiting.

oddmommy @ 98

I respect the view of those who advocate for impeachment, …

… I swear the Republicans would be smart to trump the chicken shit Pelosi and start the push for Impeachment..they could grab many drifting Republicans, and even some Democrats (maybe many) if they were to initiate Impeachment. Cheney and Bush are not the “real republicans” and the “real Republicans” know it.

Republicans push for Impeachment. I swear this would work for them. The only thing that would work. Otherwise they lose.

The ball is in their court.

The Dem plan is straight-forward: call for withdrawal and if needed the removal of Bush & Cheney to get it done and to crush them politically if they don’t do it.

So, if the Repubs want to play ball they just have to grab a bat and step up to the plate.

Bustednuckles @ 6

Makes you wonder how much stock of Hunts company Cheney owns now doesn’t it.

I can’t imagine that someone from Hunt Oil was one of the industry officials Cheney consulted with to set our energy policy.

Perhaps even worse is that Hunt is on the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, and as such receives a great deal of foreign intelligence information gathered by our massive intell apparatus. Think he’d use that for bidness purposes? Nah, couldn’t happen. Wudn’t be prudent.

Anyone seen a cogent discussion of Bush’s claim that he was going to do things to insure that the US would be in Iraq long after he leaves office?

Really, what is there to say? He’s going to leave us there and sink in so much investment that it will make any Dem look stupid for pulling us out.

So, the question, or test, is which Dem has the courage to do the right thing despite Dubya’s ‘trick’.

But if your aim is to destabilize the region and play off one group against the next, then it’s actually perfect to encourage separatism. If not, you would have a monolithic Iraq which would be a Shia Iraq – with Shia Iran next door…

I recall that Petraeus had words this summer with Al-Maliki over his use of Sunni militias (which had killed Shia) to fight Al Qaeda, with Al-Maliki reportedly wanting Petraeus out of the equation altogether.

http://www.signonsandiego.com/…..mpers.html

The poll was conducted by D3 Systems and KA Research in more than 450 neighbourhoods across all 18 provinces of Iraq in August, and has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.5%.

It was commissioned jointly by the BBC, ABC and Japan’s NHK.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6983841.stm

Some of the findings:

More than 2,000 Iraqis responded to the poll nationwide.

[snip]

But 85% of Iraqis say they have little or no confidence in US and UK forces.

[snip]

In terms of quality of life, 80% of Iraqis say the availability of jobs is bad or very bad, 93% say the same about electricity supplies, 75% for clean water, 92% for fuel.

And 77% of Iraqis say the ability to live where they want, without persecution, is bad or very bad.

[snip]

Sixty-two per cent of Iraqis still say Iraq should have a unified central government, and 98% say it would be a bad thing for the country to separate along sectarian lines.

[snip]

Overall, the Sunni community comes over as deeply depressed about its condition, not surprisingly given that it is the one whose degree of influence has been dramatically reduced by the changes since the US-led invasion, despite the efforts of the Americans and others to engage the Sunnis.

There is a sharp difference in each community’s confidence in the national government – 4% of Sunnis have a degree of positive confidence in the national government, compared with 58% of Shias.

Only 34% of Sunnis have confidence in the Iraqi army, compared with 83% of Shias. The figures for the police are 37% and 83% respectively.

Only 2% of Sunnis approve of Nouri al-Maliki’s performance, compared with 54% of Shias approve. But both communities think equally overwhelmingly (by 98%) that sectarian separation is a bad thing. Iraqis are also somewhat suspicious of their neighbours.

Seventy-nine per cent of them think that Iran is actively encouraging sectarian violence in their country, 66% think the same of Syria and 65% think likewise about Saudi Arabia.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6986993.stm

98 percent of Iraqis polled say it would be bad thing for the country to separate along sectarian lines. That is amazing unanimity (I assume that some of those polled live in the Kurdish north as well). Can we please, please, please stop playing our geopolitical board games with the lives of the Iraqi people?

Yet, appallingly, General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker made very clear (in code) this week that such an amoral sectarian “divide and rule” policy is the ongoing de facto current agenda of the American occupiers in Iraq, never mind what the Iraqi people themselves would prefer. Americans are not just “overwatching” the fragmentation of Iraq into its 18 separate provinces – we are pushing that dissolution rather than building a nation. “Bribe a Tribe” is a good shorthand for it. Hunt Oil is just helping out where the Iraqi parliament has (unlike the corrupt Cabinet and its Ministries) withstood the pressure to do the occupiers’ bidding, despite all the bribes and threats we’ve deployed against its members.

And (building on brendan’s explanation @ 155) it seems clear to me that the reason Israel’s authoritarian government and their agents in the U.S., like A*P*C, prefer a divided and weak Iraq, is because the potential untapped oil reserves of Iraq are on the order of $20 TRILLION dollars. Under the control of one, united, strong national government, that wealth could mean a lot of things for the future Iraq, and Israel’s leaders would selfishly prefer to prevent another nearby self-governing oil-rich Arab nation (in spite of its own currently overwhelming military superiority and nuclear weapons stockpile – not to mention its on-call American Armed Forces “backstop”).

For more about the pre-1880 (and since) realities of the region of Iraq from a Norwegian scholar of the area (who I believe also makes the same point as brendan above, about the arbitrary meaninglessness of selecting some random date in Iraq’s past to justify and dictate what Iraq’s future should be, and thereby ignoring and dismissing the last 100 years or so of its modern urban development), see:

http://www.historiae.org/

Ann in AZ @ 147

So, what is accomplished by forcing them to stay one country whether they want to or not? If that is not what you’re suggesting, what would be your suggestion. And, you mention that:
What exactly is that geopolitical aim, and what is wrong with it?

Oh, your last one is a great question — I neither support nor don’t support partition, but I’d like to know the pros and cons. Perhaps someone will deign to inform us — brendan, sona…?

oh, and p.s., sona, The UK includes neither Canada nor Indonesia.

-MS

I can’t definitively inform you, but I can deign to speculate. I think the Israelis, and, by extension, the current U.S. regime wanted to destroy Iraq as a power. Great powers have always sought to destroy rival states, or compromise weaker neighboring states through partition. Just look at Europe, with the division of Germany and the multiple partitions of Poland (in this case the filthy justifications for them even resemble the way our pundits talk about Iraq), or look at the breakup of the Ottoman Empire or the attempted partition of Turkey proper. Even a superficial knowledge of history (which is about all I have) should be enough to get you to see this. Above all, I’m simply astounded that the word “partition” doesn’t evoke these historical associations, and that it doesn’t have for you the connotations of rapaciousness that it should.

It’s not some fuckup that they disbanded the Iraqi army. We’ve had a lot of speculation on this site on whether “chaos” was intended or not. The better way to think of it is whether chaos was an avenue towards partition, i.e., the elimination of the Iraqi state.

A partitioned state, besides being a military nullity, is easier to control politically and establish bases in, in case you want the oil money, or want to attack Iran. Kurdistan, because of it’s ethnic separateness and national aspirations has been particularly hospital to our goals, and the Israelis, not coincidentally, have a strong intelligence presence there.

This is a very old game. Let’s wise up to it.