Iraq one step closer to civil war

As it was designed to be.

You see, a long time ago some men from an organisation called "Project for a New American Century" (PNAC) wrote to the then President of the United States of America Bill Clinton demanding action on Iraq. Saddam is a threat to freedom and world security, they cried. That was in 1998.

Shortly after that these same people of PNAC began wishing for "a new Pearl Harbour", an event so catastrophic to the US public that they would gladly send their beloved sons and daughters off to fight in a war in a far off land (sitting on a lake of lovely, lovely oil).

On September 11th 2001 PNAC got their "new Pearl Harbour", when the World Trade Centre was hit. Somehow despite being the most fortified and defended building on the planet, The Pentagon was hit, even though the WTC had been hit an hour before!

The men at PNAC (God bless 'em) took upon themselves to pin the blame on Saddam and get him. For the men who wrote that letter to Clinton were now in power, in the White House, in the Pentagon, in the State Department.

Surely if they wrote to Clinton in 1998 demanding replacing Saddam in 1998, then come 2001, three years later, they had a plan for the reconstruction of a post-Saddam Iraq. Particularly if the good 'ol boys of the RAF and USAF had been bombing and bombing and bombing Iraq into the third world throughout the 1990's.

So come 2005, two years after Saddam has been ousted, and report after report has confirmed that there was no, repeat no, serious plan for a post-Saddam Iraq.

Money, lots of it, has gone missing. Precious archaeological pieces have been looted. The place is falling apart, with no security. Ahmed Chalabi is now in charge of the oil (Chalabi is the man who supplied Cheney et al with some really dodgy "intelligence").

So today I find it no surprise that the USA is not going to give Iraq the infrastructure it promised to make it a beacon of hope for the rest of the Middle East. No, instead watch Iraq crumble into three states along religious lines. Iran will be accused of meddling.

From http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1676911,00.html

Bush pulls the plug on Iraq reconstruction

$18bn funding to stop at end of year

Suzanne Goldenberg in WashingtonTuesday January 3, 2006The Guardian

The Bush administration has scaled back its ambitions to rebuild Iraq from the devastation wrought by war and dictatorship and does not intend to seek new funds for reconstruction, it emerged yesterday.

In a decision that will be seen as a retreat from a promise by President George Bush to give Iraq the best infrastructure in the region, administration officials say they will not seek reconstruction funds when the budget request is presented to Congress next month, the Washington Post reported yesterday.

The $18.4bn (£10.6bn) allocation is scheduled to run out in June 2007. The move will be seen by critics as further evidence of the administration's failure to plan for the aftermath of the war.

A country with running water and steady energy supply and health system etc is unikely to break out into civil war (unless you get some SAS guys in there to plant some IEDs which can be blamed on opposing factions).