For those who want to read it:
...We Are Standing On it.
Article posted at 'bgtruth' blog, original article from Michael Ruppert's 'From the Wilderness' -- well worth the read, scroll down to July 8, 2005 post. The Evolution of the Bush-Rumsfeld War Doctrine Roadmap to Martial Law London Attacks From Another Perspectiveby Stan Goff
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The Bush administration spends money. Just as money can trade rain forests for Coke, money can buy expertise. But military expertise isn't what has gotten them this far. On the contrary, they have already secured their places in history as the leaders of the most powerful military in the world that is heading to being defeated by a stateless insurgency.
snip
While the new constituent assembly remains engaged in a monumental struggle behind the scenes over three key issues - the form of "federalism," the fate of Kirkuk, and the disposition of Iraq's oil industry - the factions are backed by armed militias. The Kurds command the largest militia, and the second largest armed organization in Iraq, the 80,000 strong Peshmerga. The Supreme Council of Islamic Revolution (SCIRI), which dominates the constituent assembly, has fielded thousands of former Badr Brigade members, who also predominate in many of the "official" Iraqi armed forces and police. The Iranian-controlled Da'wa Party has organized a militia as counterweight to these two large ones. Muqtada al Sadr still controls a very substantial militia that operates almost as a government in many parts of Baghdad and Najaf. And the Iraqi Patriotic Alliance (IPA) - the dominant and most well-organized element within the guerrilla resistance - operates in many areas throughout Anbar with strong popular support. Islamist fighters, largely from Saudi Arabia, have infiltrated Iraq and engaged in multiple actions, including firefights with the IPA.
The territorial division of these armed elements has minimized conflict between them to some extent, but the question of regional or ethnic federalism is far from resolved, and many of these armed actors are leaning forward in anticipation of politics by other means. Kirkuk has become a tinderbox of contention meanwhile, with the widening Kurd-Arab current of conflict creating a kind of political quicksand for the constituent assembly.
snip
In the early 1980s, President Ronald Reagan - the first of two second-rate actors to have been Governor of California - ordered a military intervention and occupation in Lebanon. Within weeks, some of his own closest advisors, including Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger, were telling him that this was a situation ripe for disaster, and that the US forces needed to be withdrawn as soon as possible. Reagan responded more positively, however, to someone whose grasp of global politics was as limited as his own, and whose worldview was heavily informed by a kind of Billy Badass, big-dick machismo - former Secretary of State and then-National Security Advisor Alexander Haig. Haig counseled Reagan that US "credibility" involved "sticking to its guns," and Reagan - himself a veteran of several cinematic Westerns - determined to "stay the course."
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