The Brookings Institution delivers dire predictions for Iraq and the Middle East. The White House policies in Iraq risk destabilizing the entire region, with dire consequences for Iraqis and surrounding nations.
The US must draw up plans to deal with an all-out Iraqi civil war that would kill hundreds of thousands, create millions of refugees, and could spill over into a regional catastrophe, disrupting oil supplies and setting up a direct confrontation between Washington and Iran.
The report calls for the U.S. to accept its mission has failed, and to attempt to contain the fall-out of its misguided policies in Iraq. Study is based upon experiences from other conflicts that spilled over to civil war.
US troops, says the study, should withdraw from Iraqi cities. This was "the only rational course of action, horrific though it will be", as America refocused its efforts from preventing civil war to containing its effects.
The unremittingly bleak document, drawing on the experience of civil wars in Lebanon, the former Yugoslavia, Congo and Afghanistan, also offers a remarkably stark assessment of Iraq's "spill-over" potential across the Persian Gulf region.
In a "war game" testing US options, the Saban Centre for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution found that, as the descent into civil war gathered pace, confrontation between the US and Iran intensified, and Washington's leverage on Tehran diminished. Civil war in Iraq would turn Iran into "the unambiguous adversary" of the US.
Indeed, everything indicates that that is already happening. The study appeared on the same day as the Iranian ambassador in Iraq told The New York Times that Tehran intended to expand its influence in Iraq. US commanders now claim that thousands of Iranian advisers are arming and training Shia militias.
The influential Washington Think Tank requests the White House to begin actively seeking to contain the all-out civil war about to engulf Iraq.
This is somewhat contrasting with Cheney's cheery "enormous successes" - I guess.
Link to Brookings Institution press release
Article in The Independent