Right answer, Wrong question

Lara Marlowe misses several key points in what is an otherwise perceptive overview of Iraq's situation. Take for example Iraq's natural resource and the principle instigator of change, oil. Then there's the hopeful democratic elections, struggling through in spite of the coalitions best efforts to contain the process. There's the still growing insurgency, fueled by occupation not abated by it. There's the fact that the majority of insurgent attacks are aimed at occupying forces not fellow Iraqis. There's the substantial increase in US air attacks. There's the repetitive polls revealing the same things time after time. There's another horrific mass grave found, remnants of those abandoned after the first Gulf War.

Even without these topics covered one comes to the same conclusion, coalition forces will remain, but for a very different reason. It remains baffling to me how the mainstream media can contradict history and still maintain that coalition forces are only present in the Middle East to form democracies and remove allies turned despots.


US buried in Iraq with its head in the sand

IRAQ: Despite Bush's boasts, the Shia-Sunni conflict has escalated into a veritable civil war, a fact not acknowledged by Washington, writes Lara Marlowe

President George W Bush said this year "will be recorded as a turning point in the history of Iraq, the history of the Middle East, and the history of freedom". Vice-president Dick Cheney told troops the US had "turned a corner," in Iraq and that 2005 "was in fact a watershed year". US leaders base the rash assertion that "we are winning the war in Iraq" on the successful organisation of three landmark polls: the election of a transitional assembly in January, the ratification of a constitution in October, and the election of a four-year, full-term parliament on December 15th. But there is no guarantee that this month's election will improve the situation. Senator Richard Lugar, who heads the foreign relations committee, predicts it could take until April 2006 for squabbling Shia, Sunni and Kurdish parties to agree on a government. In the meantime, the insurgency is likely to thrive in the power vacuum, as it did in early 2005.

continued... The Irish Times