The situation in Iraq is getting worse: Don't believe anyone who says otherwise. The surge-ified, "less violent" Iraq that the general has presided over so confidently is, in fact, a chaotic, violent tinderbox of city states, proliferating militias armed to the teeth, competing regions armed to the teeth, and competing religious factions armed to the teeth. Worse yet, under Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker, the U.S. has been the great proliferator. It has armed and funded close to 100,000 Sunnis organized into militias reportedly intent on someday destroying "the Iranians" (i.e. the Maliki government). It has also supported Shiite militias (aka the Iraqi army). In the recent offensive, i...

The situation in Iraq is getting worse: Don't believe anyone who says otherwise. The surge-ified, "less violent" Iraq that the general has presided over so confidently is, in fact, a chaotic, violent tinderbox of city states, proliferating militias armed to the teeth, competing regions armed to the teeth, and competing religious factions armed to the teeth. Worse yet, under Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker, the U.S. has been the great proliferator. It has armed and funded close to 100,000 Sunnis organized into militias reportedly intent on someday destroying "the Iranians" (i.e. the Maliki government). It has also supported Shiite militias (aka the Iraqi army). In the recent offensive, it took sides in a churning Shiite civil war. As Nir Rosen recently summed matters up in a typically brilliant piece in the Nation magazine, Baghdad today is but a set of "fiefdoms run by warlords and militiamen," a pattern the rest of the country reflects as well.

Meanwhile, in the little noticed north of the country, an Arab/Kurdish civil war over the oil-rich city of Kirkuk and possibly Mosul as well is brewing. This, reports Pepe Escobar of Asia Times, could be explosive. Think nightmare.

http://files.tikkun.org/current/article.php?story=20080406152521862