Enemy No. 3 in Iraq by Harold Meyerson. Good, simple explanation of what's up in Iraq.

[sinkingfeeling]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/16/AR2008041602902.html

"Why is the Iraq war different from all other American wars? (Passover is upon us, so I've posed the question in correct Passover-ese.)

Not so in Iraq, where we are now fighting our third distinct enemy. In the war's first phase, we engaged Saddam Hussein's government and, after it fell, pro-Hussein and other Sunni forces that waged a guerrilla war against us. In its second phase, we fought a group that hadn't even existed when the invasion began, al-Qaeda in Iraq. By our own military's admission, al-Qaeda in Iraq was never responsible for more than a small fraction of the violence there, but it was the group most implacably hostile to our soldiers and to much of the civilian population. In this, we were greatly aided by the Sunni forces that had been our main adversaries in the war's first phase but which had come to loathe al-Qaeda. As the Sunni resistance took up arms against al-Qaeda, we reclassified the Sunnis as friends and armed them, though they remained opposed to the Shiite-dominated national government we claim as our primary ally.

Now, according to the testimony of Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker before Congress last week, our main adversaries in Iraq are the Shiite forces being aided by Iran, the Shiite power next door. Al-Qaeda in Iraq has been largely confined to the area around Mosul, and most of the attacks on U.S. forces and on the authority of the Iraqi government, they said, come from Iranian-backed Shiite militias, many aligned with Moqtada al-Sadr, who has spent the past several months in Iran. Then again, Iran also backs the Shiite-controlled government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki -- which is why it was Iran that negotiated the cease-fire between Maliki's forces and Shiite militias after Maliki's offensive against the militias in Basra ground to a halt.

And this is the war that John McCain wants to wage until victory is ours. What no one -- including McCain, Petraeus, Crocker and Bush -- can do is articulate just what such a victory would look like."

[applegrove]

1. Good roundup of the basic facts. Thanks.