As you posit, we have NO business there, despite the natural resources issues . . . it has only drained us, and will continue to do so.

Well, there IS that war profiteering benefit our banking and financial community is tied to vis a vis the war machine and Pentagon . . . but for Joe and Jane America? Not so much benefit.

Do you have any thoughts as to how the USA will respond in the next 6-12 months to changes on the ground in Iraq?

And what role do you see Israel playing, as this all comes to a head? Will they strike Iraq, as well as Iran, if they can?

But they Iran’s full support, whereas al Maliki does not.

Civil war, with SIIC the real likely winner of all the marbles when it’s over.

Ethnic cleansing has only barely begun, and there will be a huge civil war when we leave.

It was inevitable the day we went in. And lots of progressives have predicted the end game.

My only question left is what Obama will do as we draw down and it all goes to hell in Iraq.

Will he continue to get out?
Or will he resurge?

If he resurges, it’s a one term presidency, and as said above already likely is given Af/Pak operations.

A great opportunity will be squandered and wasted unless Obama discovers his inner FDR, for the home front and the foreign front . . .

Anyone that looks at Iraq’s history can see that it has always been a fantasy, never a real country. For the Ottoman Turks, it was an administrative area that grouped together a bunch of territorial and ethnic anomalies that did not fit anywhere else. After World War I, the British found it convenient to invent a country called Iraq, so that they could set up Sharif Hussein and his sons as king of something after they and the French betrayed him and denied him his planned pan-Arab nation capitaled at Damascus (st the same time as they reneged on promises of a Jewish homeland). The pro-Nazi Arab fascists that became the Baath movement found Iraq no less convenient. To emulate right-wing European nationalism they needed a nation–especially after the movement split and other factions grabbed Lebanon and Syria. All of these historical fantasies were more plausible than the Bushista variant that first saw Saddam Hussein’s Iraq as a defender of Western values and then as a sort of Middle-Eastern West Germany waiting to emerge from the ashes of its Baatho-Nazi past. But, nonetheless, they were all fantasies.

Outside of a few cafes and political party halls, Iraq is at least four countries, none of which has clean boundaries: Kurdistan in the north, Sunni Arab Iraq in the west, and Shiite Arab Iraq in the south east. Scattered across it, with no territory of its own, is an ancient Chaldean Christian nation that everyone persecutes.

Someday, maybe the locals will figure out a way to build themselves a real nation. But I doubt it. Partition will probably happen, but will not bring stability. Turkey will not tolerate an independent Kurdistan for ideological reasons. Shiite Arabs will not long tolerate Persian rulers, even if they do share a religion. Iranians are probably no happier about Kurdistan than Turks.

So, in short, its a mess. We need to get out now. No good can come of our involvement now, just as none has come of it up until now.

But if he stays and Maliki asks him to go, it will be a real mess and Iraq will eat his presidency (assuming AfPak doesn’t, which it likely will, anyway.)

Not to mention caving to the likes of Citi and BoA.

My college major was chemistry, and when I switched fields to economics, I relied heavily on data, stemming from my science background. So the Iraqi census will be very good information for me. I’d imagine it will be essential for Iraq.

And very controversial too.

Even in the U.S., there is great controversy over the census that occurs every 10 years. FYI, it involves the greater statistical accuracy of surverys as compared to a complete count. (I use statistics, but I am not a statistician. However, I’m familiar enough with the field to understand why there are so many more errors in a “complete count” than in a well defined statistical sample.

The crux is the undercount in poor areas, where families may be reluctant to answer the survey for a whole variety of reasons. So a statistician studying the areas in question can design a sample that will be more accurate than a response to a census. (Done by mail with telephone follow up.)

The U.S. census is used for the allocation of the 435 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives. The one location that loses the most with the current method is, of course, NYC, where I live. I know a NYC Corporate Council (i.e., the chief lawyer for the city) who litigated it before the U.S. Supreme Court twice, losing both times. It looks like Obama’s administration may go for the sampling method this time, and the Republicans have their knickers in a twist.

As an experiment, I did not answer the 2000 census, either in my city apartment, or my country house. I still had a land line telephone in both places (now I have only a cell phone, and those numbers are not listed). I never recieved a follow-up by mail or by phone for my non-responses, illustrating only one of the many foibles of censuses.

Thought you might be interested in a bit of information from me, since you’ve been so generous in providing information to me.