Friday, August 05, 2005
Pundit RhetIraq: Larry Diamond
Who: Larry Diamond (Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, advised the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad from January to April 2004.)
Source: Slate
Quotes: From ongoing discussion with Dan Senor (Founder of Senor Strategies, chief spokesman for the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq and a senior adviser to Ambassador L. Paul Bremer III from April 2003 through June 2004.)
There is another way we could fail in Iraq. That would be for the pro-Iranian Islamic fundamentalists (the most militant among the ruling Shiite alliance) to conquer power through political force, intimidation, and intrigue, like the Leninists of a previous era. That has begun to happen in Iraq, with the steadily rising power of SCIRI (the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq—so named for a reason) and its 15,000-man militia, the Badr Organization (trained in Iran by the Revolutionary Guards). Adding to the danger is the growing mobilization of other militant Islamist militias. Perhaps that was one reason why the administration tried covertly to rescue Allawi's campaign. It is another sign of this administration's incompetence and duplicity that the very prospect it has most feared has been advanced by its bungling. To your list of possible disastrous political outcomes, one could add the prospect of the United States giving more than 2,000 lives, spending hundreds of billions of dollars, and hollowing out our military readiness so that pro-Iranian Shiite theocrats could seize power in Baghdad.
Source: Slate
Quotes: From ongoing discussion with Dan Senor (Founder of Senor Strategies, chief spokesman for the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq and a senior adviser to Ambassador L. Paul Bremer III from April 2003 through June 2004.)
There is another way we could fail in Iraq. That would be for the pro-Iranian Islamic fundamentalists (the most militant among the ruling Shiite alliance) to conquer power through political force, intimidation, and intrigue, like the Leninists of a previous era. That has begun to happen in Iraq, with the steadily rising power of SCIRI (the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq—so named for a reason) and its 15,000-man militia, the Badr Organization (trained in Iran by the Revolutionary Guards). Adding to the danger is the growing mobilization of other militant Islamist militias. Perhaps that was one reason why the administration tried covertly to rescue Allawi's campaign. It is another sign of this administration's incompetence and duplicity that the very prospect it has most feared has been advanced by its bungling. To your list of possible disastrous political outcomes, one could add the prospect of the United States giving more than 2,000 lives, spending hundreds of billions of dollars, and hollowing out our military readiness so that pro-Iranian Shiite theocrats could seize power in Baghdad.
