No Win Situation

The events in Fallujah and other areas of Iraq are being well covered and discussed in other blogs and in the news; I'm not going to rehash any of the facts.

We have, it seems, gotten to a point in our Excellent Iraqi Adventure where no matter what we do we will be wrong. Everything BushCo. can tell the military to do or not do will be exactly the wrong thing.

If the CPA or the Iraqis arrest al Sadr the Shiites will explode in anger and violence. Recent events will seem tame in comparison. If he is wounded or killed in the attempt it will seem that a nuclear weapon had gone off.

If the CPA does nothing about al Sadr and the Shiites, the spiral of violence will continue to spin out of control and more coalition soldiers and civilians and Iraqis will die by ones and twos or threes.

If the coalition decides to withdraw from Iraq precipitously (something that is not likely to happen given the swollen egos of BushCo.), anarchy and chaos will explode in Iraq and it will descend into the worst religiously fueled civil war imaginable.

If the coalition stays the violence perpetrated by the Sunnis will continue and probably spread well outside the Sunni Triangle and infect the rest of the country, ensuring that more coalition personnel die every day. A religious civil war is likely in this situation as well.

This morning on ABC News, Diane Sawyer, doing a pretty good imitation of a journalist, asked Paul Bremmer if there were anything that would force the rescheduling of the June 30th handover of power to the Iraqi Provisional Government. He would not even answer the question, despite repeated attempts by Sawyer to pin him down. It seems that this ill conceived power shift is going to occur no matter what.

It also seems that we are destined to lose more soldiers and civilians in this quagmire as BushCo. thrashes around blindly - without a plan.

Without a clue.

Without a chance to win.