WorkingForChange: "Iraq teeters on the brink of civil war"

[Bush_Eats_Beef]

http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?ItemID=18152

Last year, at Thanksgiving, candidate/President George W. Bush scored a PR coup by making a surprise visit to troops in Baghdad for Thanksgiving dinner. This year, if he attempts the same stunt, he will find an Iraq that, thanks to his ill-advised policies, teeters on the brink of civil war. If such a war comes to pass, the Fallujah offensive will mark a significant turning point, a point at which ordinary Iraqis divested themselves of any last remaining tolerance for the Americans.

Characteristically, American media has yet to fully catch up to the latest bad news from Iraq. And, so, while American media focused on the recent U.S. blitz on Fallujah, the political and military fallout from that offensive hasn't gotten nearly the play it deserves. Put simply: Iraqi anger over the flattening of Fallujah, and the creation of a refugee population of the survivors among its 400,000 residents, not only threatens the January elections, but has turned virtually every corner of Iraq into an insurgent hotbed.

As of this week, here is a partial list of the cities in Iraq where massive fighting continues between U.S. forces and insurgents: Afar, Hilla, Mawaheel, Suwaira, Hit, Iskandariyah, Haditha, Latifiyah, Khaldiyah, and several neighborhoods in Baghdad, including: al-Dora, al-Amiriyah, Abu Ghraib, al-Adhamiyah, Hur Rajab, al-Abidi, Salman Bak, and Khan Dhari. The holy Shiite city of Kerbala has also seen a lot of fighting. The guerrillas blew up four oil wells near Kirkuk and a pipeline that links the northern oil fields to the country's largest refinery at Baiji. The L.A. Times reports that British troops have withdrawn completely from the Shiite city of Amarah because they "got tired of fighting their way out every time they needed to be resupplied." Now they just run patrol on the outskirts of the city and peer into the town through their night-vision goggles, hoping to see what's going on. That, in essence, is what has become of the U.S. policy of "containment."

Iraqi anger over Fallujah is so pronounced that Nov. 18, leaders of the interim Iraqi government held a summit in the Kurdish north to discuss how to structure the elections in January. Instead of discussing the topics on the agenda, the Iraqi ministers and council members ended up calling for a delay in the elections for security reasons. They acknowledged what the Bush administration has been denying all along: if the elections go ahead in January, the Sunnis will not participate, and if they're officially disenfranchised, a civil war is likely. Already, almost every major Sunni political faction has announced a boycott of the elections, meaning, under the political system we've devised for them, they won't be represented at the table as the new government draws up what it hopes will be a permanent constitution for Iraq. That's how one gets to civil war: two competing groups, each claiming sovereignty over the same territory.