According to
today's Washington Post, the situation has gone from worse to worst to...truly beyond description in Iraq. Death squads roam at will, kidnapping, torturing, beheading, and executing people. All in all, according to a recent report by Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, mortality rates in Iraq
have doubled since the U.S. invasion to overthrow Saddam Hussein, with
"an estimated 655,000 Iraqis hav[ing] died since 2003 who might still be alive but for the US-led invasion."
Heckuva job, huh?
As if all that's not terrible enough, it now looks like our worst nightmare is coming true - the fragmentation of Iraq into pieces, and the creation of a Muslim fundamentalist, anti-American, Al Qaeda state in the Sunni areas of the country. According to the Washington Post, just yesterday
"al-Qaeda in Iraq and other Sunni Arab insurgent groups declared a new Islamic republic in the western and central parts of the country."
In other words, it looks like Iraq is heading towards the following situation:
*A Shi'ite south, where most of Iraq's oil is located, dominated by a fundamentalist Iran with nuclear weapons (eventually)
*An independent Kurdish north, leading to tensions if not armed conflict with NATO ally Turkey, which strongly opposes an independent Kurdish state
*A fundamentalist Sunni center of the country, aligned with Al Qaeda and other anti-American terrorist groups.
Now, can one of the apologists for this @#%!%^$#@ war - maybe George Allen? - please explain to me how any of this is making the United States better off or more secure? And can Senator John Warner, who is a smart guy with integrity who now is saying that we've got 60-90 days to fix things in Iraq (or else...), please explain to me why on earth he's appearing with Allen in a TV commercial? Instead of doing that, I call on Senator Warner not only to withdraw his backing from George Allen, but to throw his strong support behind his fellow Marine and former Navy Secretary, Jim Webb. Together, perhaps the two of you can figure a way out of the spiraling disaster that I call "BushAllen's Iraq."
Lowell Feld is Netroots Coordinator for the Jim Webb for US Senate Campaign. The ideas expressed here belong to Lowell Feld alone, and do not represent those of Jim Webb, his advisors, staff, or supporters.