The Scotsman: Iran to aid US attack on Iraq as al-Qaeda crumbles: The New Yorker magazine claims Iraqi opposition leader Ahmed Chalabi has delivered the Bush administration a war plan using Iranian help in an offensive against Iraq "which calls not only for bombing but for the deployment of thousands of American Special Forces troops".
You know, there ought to be a question mark at the end of the title of that article.
Punctuation aside, I can't imagine that this plan has a snowball's chance. For one thing, having been (literally) starved for most of the decade and driven out or exterminated by Saddam's army, there's really not much of an opposition to work with. For another, any opposition movement in Iraq that would actually trust us for major support, given what happened with the Kurds, needs its brains examined. Third, it strikes me as highly unlikely that, in the absence of any substantive or relatively successful rebellion inside the country, the US would even consider placing "thousands" of special forces troops into Iraq -- I don't know that the administration wants to test the will of the country to sustain massive casualties with something that uncertain. And fourth ... why on earth would WE trust Chalabi? Incompetent and unwise would seem to be a kind way to describe the man.
His Fraudulency may or may not be prepared to move on Iraq -- equities of the situation aside, my suspicion is that he would rather move on Somalia and Sudan, both because they contain known al-Qaida cells, and because neither of them has a military worth our notice; it's simply somewhat more likely to get noticeable results against them -- but I don't think he's prepared to engage in relatively unprovoked full-scale invasion. Certainly not on a scale this small (if you're going to do something that stupid, you'd damn well better do it big); it would be a certain means to get the soldiers slaughtered. Iraq is not Afghanistan, and is not that poorly armed, even now. Air power would be less effective, because Iraq has a much larger, better armed army, and there's no relatively well-armed domestic rebellion going on at the moment. And what country would be prepared to let us use its airfields to run carpet-bombing raids against Iraq? Iran has better sense than that, plus we continue not to have official diplomatic relations with them. It's also unlikely tha you could build a "loosely federalized democracy" in Iraq, just like that; it's far more likely that if you get rid of the Republican Guard and Saddam, you'll have some gruesome settling of scores. (And, one might note, we'll be one of the scores being settled. Putting US soldiers into Iraq and expecting the Iraqis to hail us as the conquering heroes is a good way to get them killed in really relentlessly interesting ways.)
(The concept of Iraq joining in the Hunt for Osama does give one a snicker, though, doesn't it?)
Copyright © 2001, Iain Jackson, after-words.org
[Archives: 2001 and after]
Archives before February 5, 2001
Search entries:
12/19/2001: vive la france
12/19/2001: princess, redux
12/19/2001: yemen and rumsfeld
12/18/2001: you're NOT in the army now
12/18/2001: interesting donation
12/18/2001: shame on winn dixie, indeed
12/18/2001: saudi princess
12/17/2001: new resolve
12/17/2001: a victim of the attack ... yeah, right
12/17/2001: polluters ho!