Tuesday, March 4, 2008

Sunnis make merry on US's dime

By Gareth Porter
Asia Times

".......One US colonel with long experience in Iraq told Lieutenant Colonel Douglas McGregor (Army retired), a senior fellow at the Straus Military Reform Project, that the Sunni insurgents' participation in the Sahwa may be a transitory stage in a "fight, bargain, subvert, fight approach" to achieving their long-term aims, as McGregor testified before a sub-committee of the House Foreign Affairs Committee on February 8.

Those aims include the complete withdrawal of US occupation forces and reducing the power of a Shi'ite-dominated government they believe represents Iranian interests in Iraq.

The Sunni insurgent strategy of flooding the US-sponsored paramilitary forces with their own fighters appears to make the Sunni insurgency stronger than ever. Far from being a device for "bottom-up reconciliation", the Awakening Councils have added powder to the powder keg of Sunni-Shi'ite tensions. "

No comments: