Your prediction of what Iraq will look like one year from now?

[kentuck]

I would predict that there will be "new" leadership in the government. I predict that the security forces we helped to train will turn against their government to form their own "militias". They will operate like rival "gangs". We will be attempting to get our Middle East allies to help, along with NATO troops. We will have withdrawn our troops back into the Kurdish areas of Northern Iraq and down along the Kuwaiti borders. Also, we will have some near the Syrian border. However, this withdrawal will not happen until there is a massive explosion that kills a large number of American troops. There will be a major assassination or two of high government officials in Iraq. By next Christmas, we will have over 4,000 deaths from the war. As you can see, I am not very optimistic.

[Botany]

1. bush & Fox news told me it would be like this:

[leftchick]

4. REALITY: More Like Lebanon Times 10

or 100.....

[Botany]

8. You are right

but i bet the oil fields and pipelines stay protected.

Over 500,000 Iraqi dead .... 900,000 have fled the country
no water, no jobs, no electricity, and death all around.

And in the end a large section will become a radical Shi ite
theocracy aligned with Iran. A perfect home for anti western
terrorists.

[TheCowsCameHome]

11. Hey! Who photoshopped the bodies out of the river?

[cynatnite]

15. But really....they want this....

[hwmnbn]

2. This is the closest to what Iraq will look like.....

[orpupilofnature57]

3. Truly besides the soldiers I don't want to see there( not One)

I don't give a hill of lobbyists ,2000 and some - 200 and some ?

[David Zephyr]

5. Breaking into three semi-autonomous states

with Turkey getting some of the oil fields in the north (which they lease now) to appease them about the Kurds. I wrote this back in May of 2004, years before Biden mentioned it.

It is the only "solution" that provides the escape from civil mayhem and which I think we would be best to support. The Kurds can police their own, the Sunni theirs and the Shi'a theirs. Everybody gets some oil, everybody gets to govern and police their own territories.

And we get to leave without a bloodbath to haunt our psyches for generations to come.

[orpupilofnature57]

14. Joe Biden's plan also ,You and him are staunch Democrats so

the next time a Republican says we don't have a plan, I'm going to say Impeachment.

[David Zephyr]

17. Absoutely.

Impeachment is a very good plan, orpupilofnature57. :hi:

I like Kentuck's posts. He always makes us think. He's been doing it here for years now.

[kentuck]

18. Thanks David!

You have some pretty thoughtful posts yourself. :)

[orpupilofnature57]

19. All you old members ,are straight up fountains of thought and information

My neighbor ,Cooley Hurd turned me on to DU a couple of years ago , I'm indebted for sure ,saved from MSM ,Thanks to DU.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

6. from the memory hole...

[MadMaddie]

7. It will begin to look like the Sykes-Picot Agreement

at the beginning of the 20th century. I was looking for a map but couldn't find one..

<snip>
During World War I, the British and French divided the Middle East in the Sykes-Picot Agreement. The British would control Mesopotamia. At the end of World War I, the League of Nations granted the area to the United Kingdom as a mandate. It was formed out of three former Ottoman vilayets (regions): Mosul, Baghdad and Basra. However, for three out of four centuries of Ottoman Turkish rule, the vilayets of Baghdad, Mosul, and Basra were administered from Baghdad.
<snip>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq

[MonkeyFunk]

9. I predict

it will be tri-partite. Maybe not within a year, but within 5 years.

Long term - there will no Iraq. The North goes to Turkey, the East to Iran and the rest to Syria or Jordan.

Personally, I favor auctioning it all off to the highest bidder.

[jazzjunkysue]

10. Deeper graves. Leveled buildings. Tented refugees. Iranian militia

running wild.

Iran will not stop until it demolishes the place.

[w4rma]

12. Still bad. (nt)

[Jack Rabbit]

13. Baghdad a year from now

Baghdad a year from now will like Beirut about twenty years ago.

[rug]

16. The November Surprise

[TankLV]

20. Full blown Civil War - with our boys and girls in the middle...

It will get worse and worse until we see a hundred Vietnam "exits" by rooftop...

You start something underhanded and illegal, it can never end good for the ones who started it.

Unfortunately, the War Criminal has indicted us all with his behavior because we allowed this War Criminal to occupy OUR White House in OUR name...

[Jed Dilligan]

21. I think the only effective US presence left

will be in the Green Zone. The Brits will be out of the south, which will have become effectively a province of Iran. Our "friends" the Kurds will be enmeshed in a guerrilla war against our "friends" the Turks. We will be missing Saddam Hussein like crazy right about then.