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March 07, 2006
U.S. Top Envoy to Iraq Hints at "Civil War"
Zalmay Khalilzad, the top U.S. envoy to Iraq and a former oil industry consultant who nine years ago "was chatting pleasantly over dinner with leaders of Afghanistan's Taliban regime about their shared enthusiasm for a proposed multibillion-dollar pipeline deal (Washington Post)," has finally dropped the bomb.
In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, Khalilzad said "potential is there" for civil war in Iraq. (Why yes, I'd say Iraq has a LOT of potential for, and quite possibly an already kinetic, civil war.) "'We have opened the Pandora's box and the question is, what is the way forward?'" Khalilzad added.
"Khalilzad's central message that the United States cannot immediately pull out of Iraq jibed with Bush administration policy," writes Daragahi. "But he offered a far gloomier picture than assessments made in recent days by U.S. military spokesmen."
The question in my mind: Did Khalilzad here execute a slip of the tongue when faced with a skilled journalist? Or, has the Bush administration actually tapped "less visible" [to Joe America] executors of policy to create a slow leak of admission that Iraq is in a civil war (remember kids, "sectarian strife" is a synonym)?
Khalilzad has been a right-wing policy enforcer since the Reagan days and, as Daragahi notes, "is among the architects of the U.S. plan to reshape the political balance of the Middle East after the Sept. 11 attacks." (Here I'll read between the lines for you: Khalizad is a Neocon who, along with Donald Rumsfeld, John Bolton, Paul Wolfowitz, Willam Kristol, and others, sought the overthrow of Saddam Hussein as far back as 1997. FUN FACT: 1997 was the same year that Khalilzad, as a consultant for the American oil company Unocal, had dinner with Taliban leaders.)
Ahem. Anyway. Is the Bush administration on its way to "admitting" that Iraq is entering a civil war, in the only pussy ass way it can muster, by keeping mum while shielding itself with more vocal pawns of the policy arena?
I guess we will just have to keep our ears open to find out.
***UPDATE - March 8, 2006***
Today, Borzou was a guest on Rachel Maddow Show (which, if you haven't figured out by now, I listen to religiously). As though reading my mind, Rachel asked Borzou almost precisely my question above.
Maddow: [Citing recent comments from Donald Rumsfeld that the is media exaggerating the violence in Iraq and others who downplay the 'sectarian strife in Iraq] "Has the ambassador been toeing that sort of line that you've been hearing from other people in the administration until now?"
Daragahi: You know, actually the ambassador has not been. On the issue of a possible civil war in Iraq, he's been very frank from the very beginning of the latest crisis which broke out on the 22nd of February after the bombing of a Shiite shrine in Samara. He's been quite open about the fact that the country was on the brink of a new level of conflict and that it had pulled back. So he's been very, very, very open about that.
Maddow: Do you sense that his assessment and his frankness about that -- about the risks in Iraq, and the level of violence there right now -- the fact that it does contrast so strongly with what we're hearing right now from Donald Rumsfeld and from the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs [of Staff], do you sense that there's any political tension around that, around these two different lines coming from the administration?
Daragahi: Well I can only sort of speculate -- make an informed speculation -- but I think it is important to note that there are these upcoming discussions about ... whether it's possible to reduce troop levels this year, and I think there might be a little bit of worry on the part of certain people in the administration that, were the U.S. to reduce troops dramatically this year, that it might send the wrong message to Sunni arabs who are feeling increasingly besieged by the Shiite-controlled security ministies and might be inspired to form their own militias, which would be potentially another level of chaos and violence in this country -- that it would be an encouragement to the very very extremist Salafi insurgents such as Abu Musab Al Zarqawi who are looking for any signs of weakness in the U.S. And it might also be an encouragement to Tehran -- neighboring Iran definitely has plans on Iraq and its got a geopolitical vision that includes keeping strategic interest in Iraq -- so I'm sure there's a little bit of fear there.
Posted by MJuhre at March 7, 2006 04:24 PM