Kurdish official: "If you wanted a united Iraq, you never should have gotten rid of Saddam"

[sabra]

http://select.nytimes.com/2007/08/29/opinion/29friedman.html?_r=1&n=Top%2fOpinion%2fEditorials%20and%20Op%2dEd%2fOp%2dEd%2fColumnists%2fThomas%20L%20Friedman&oref=login

Watch the Sunni Tribes

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Published: August 29, 2007


Warning! This important shift by the Sunni tribes could come unglued if the Shiite-led Iraqi government doesn’t start providing government services — water, fuel and electricity — to the Sunni areas the tribes have retaken.

It could also come apart because, well, this is Iraq. As one U.S. general said to me of the Sunni tribes, “They still hate us. They just hate Al Qaeda even more right now and they hate the Persians even more than them. But they could turn their guns back on us anytime.”

...

I understand the Shiite’s reticence. The Sunnis have resisted everything for four years and now they want government services.

But it is in our interest, because it increases the chances of the only possible solution here, and that is a loose federation in which each sect controls its own areas and Baghdad serves as an oil-funded A.T.M., dispensing cash proportionally.

That is the only way we can get out of here without Iraq exploding. Or, as a Kurdish official said to me: “If you wanted a united Iraq, you never should have gotten rid of Saddam, because he was the only one who could hold this place together.”

[Kagemusha]

1. Truth hurts.

That's why a lot of people chose comforting lies instead.

[liberal N proud]

2. The only people too stupid to see that are in the bu$h regime

Saddam didn't play well with Dick and Donald so they had to take him out.

[redqueen]

3. they already knew that going in

they wanted years and years of war... everything is going exactly according to plan

[groovedaddy]

4. They wanted the oil, not a united Iraq

If they get the oil, U.S. troops go home.

[WinkyDink]

7. Right and wrong. Troops stay, to protect oil companies/workers.

[kenny blankenship]

5. And the moment the Shia govt vs. Sunni militia war erupts in Anbar, Al-Qaida will be welcomed back

[WinkyDink]

6. Exactly. Se also: Yugoslavia, former.

[Elwood P Dowd]

8. Yep, Tito held it together for decades

and thumbed his nose at the Soviets in the process.

[pansypoo53219]

9. has frydman

sorry for going gaga for war like all the other idiots in the gnews?

too late chump.