Grim reality

I'm not sure if the headline below is exactly correct, some months or years of blood yet to flow I fear, arising out of the Iraq adventure, and Jenkins' article puts more faith in the American political system today than clearly it warranted in 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005 and so far this year... But the factual meat of the piece is shocking. What has been done is shocking. And I agree with at least one conclusion here: that Blair is mad.

America has finally taken on the grim reality of Iraq
Simon Jenkins
Wednesday October 18, 2006
The Guardian

Guardian Unlimited | Comment is free | America has finally taken on the grim reality of Iraq: "The Baker report on an exit strategy from Iraq, leaked this week in the US, is as sensible as it is sensational. It rejects "staying the course" as no longer plausible and purports to seek alternatives to just "cutting and running". Stripped of political sweetening, it concludes that there is none. America must leave Iraq without preconditions and hope that its neighbours, hated Syria and Iran, can clear up the mess...

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The UNHCR estimates 365,000 internal refuges in Iraq this year alone. More are seeking asylum abroad than from any other nation.
A third of Iraq's professional class is reported to have fled to Jordan, a flight of skills worse than under Saddam. UN monitors now report 2,000 people a day are crossing the Syrian border. Over a hundred lecturers at Baghdad university alone have been murdered, mostly for teaching women. There are few places in Iraq where women can go about unattended or unveiled. Gunmen arrived earlier this month at a Baghdad television station and massacred a dozen of the staff, an incident barely thought worth reporting. The national museum is walled up. Electricity supply is down to four hours a day. No police uniform can be trusted. The arrival anywhere of an army unit can be prelude to a mass killing and makes a mockery of the American policy of 'security transfer'. All intelligence out of Iraq suggests this is no longer a functioning state.

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Three years ago America went to war on a lie, a wing and a prayer. That war has clearly failed and consensus is disintegrating.

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Downing Street is intellectually numb, like a forgotten outpost of a crumbling Roman empire. It can see the barbarians at the gates yet it dare not respond as it knows it should because no new instructions have arrived from Rome.

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Blair's last comment on Iraq was that any withdrawal would be "craven surrender" and would endanger British security. This is mad."