Honest opinion please..

[flo]

What are your views on the upcoming handover to the Iraqi security forces, do you think things will go pear shaped or stay on a fairly even keel for our lads and lasses in the gulf.

[Fenrir]

Completely, utterly, and absurdly pear-shaped. I'd place money on it.

[Aldo]

Fallujah should be a good judge of what will happen, and I haven't heard anything bad comeing from the town yet, admitedly it's only been a few hours. When the Iraqis take full charge I think it'll probably go well if things keep on there current track, though it might be fragile for a while.

Just like to point out that coalition forces will still be there for a long time after June (the 4th ?) and will not be controled by the Iraq governing body rather by there own commanders.

[HavocIRL]

The sooner the coalition pull out the better. You brits have done a great job apart from the recent torture of prisoners (A few bad apples I suspect) but the yanks just keep making mistake after mistake especially in the heavy handed tactics they keep using.

Whats going to happen is the US is going to pull out and leave a big mess for the UN and the Iraqi people to clean up. I think it will be a while before the country will ever be stable and only after a lot of people die.

Then again I could be wrong, just my own humble opinion.

[Frank S.]

Here's a view on it by the former CIA station chief from Saudi Arabia.

The proposed plan to turn over control of the Fallujah security situation to an Iraqi force under the command of four retired generals is much more significant than might at first be apparent.

On the strategic level, with regard to overall American policy in Iraq, it represents a defeat for those who have contended all along that the insurgency is being carried on by a small group of thugs who do not enjoy widespread support within the Iraqi population at large. Today Donald Rumsfeld is explaining that he is merely acceding to the recommendations of local American military commanders that this compromise arrangement be substituted for the original plan for an all-out assault ---- weakly shifting from himself to them the responsibility for this sudden abandonment of both tough tactics and tough rhetoric. This represents a humiliating defeat for those who have argued that the United States had no choice but to "pacify" Fallujah, arrest the insurgents, confiscate their weapons, and reestablish the authority of the American military occupation forces. The new plan would accomplish none of those explicit and uncompromising assertions made repeatedly over the past few weeks by the president himself, by US military commanders in the field, and (please note) by politicians in the United States of BOTH PARTIES.

Strangely, George W. Bush does not seem willing yet to acknowledge this obvious defeat for his policies. One cannot attribute this merely to bad advice from his mentors, unless one is to believe that the neocons have a complete monopoly on all in-put to his mental processes. That is not a credible explanation. It seems more likely that his stubborn adherence to simplistic explanations of all anti-American sentiments and actions is another sign of his worrisome inability to comprehend the subtleties of this and other similar international challenges falling within the broad title of "the war on terror". Perhaps his intellectual mind-set ("there is no common ground between freedom and terrorism") simply makes it impossible for him to see the world as anything other than a zero-sum conflict between good and evil. That is very troubling quality, especially in the leader of a superpower.

Another conclusion one may draw from events of the past few days is that the general US strategy for dealing with Iraq, which has been based on predictions and recommendations of the neocon cabal in Washington (especially Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle) is becoming exposed at last as the disaster that informed analysts always knew it would become. As the neocons become more and more discredited, the political currency of their chief Iraqi protege, Ahmed Chalabi, sinks rapidly in value. Hence the efforts of the neocon faction to discredit the United Nations and its principal representative for Iraqi affairs, Lakhdar Brahimi, whose ascendancy they recognize as an obvious measure of their own failure.

This morning, I heard the Iraqi foreign minister vehemently protesting the characterization of the four Iraqi generals in Fallujah by the American media as "former Saddam Hussein generals." They are, he insisted very adamantly, IRAQI generals, not "SADDAM" generals. His message seemed very clear. He was saying to all Americans: "We can handle this ourselves, damn it! We may not have your numbers or your firepower, and we may not yet be adequately trained. But if YOU try to pacify Fallujah and the rest of Iraq by brute force, you will make this country impossible for ANYONE to govern, and that means that when you eventually leave Iraq, (God willing!), you will leave us in an even worse mess than we were in before you arrived. So let us do it by ourselves, please, for better or for worse. "

I take all of this as additional strong evidence supporting the points that I made last week, before the new compromise solution in Fallujah was proposed:

1. The political personalities around whom Lakhdar Brahimi and the United Nations will build a transitional governing authority in Iraq after 30 June (whoever they may be; it doesn't matter) have already privately abandoned any expectation that the United States military will be an appropriate or an effective force on which to rely for the establishment of unity and stability in the country; where there is no such expectation, there can no longer be any real trust, and where there is a lack of trust, there will inevitably be conflict, first political, soon violent;

2. The leadership group on which Lakhdar Brahimi bestows "legitimacy" on 30 June will have the intention (perhaps not publicly expressed at first) of vesting complete responsibility for military and security decision-making to a strictly IRAQI command authority just as quickly as possible; in the short term, this may seem virtually impossible because of insufficient resources, but it has become the clear objective of even the most moderate and reasonable Iraqis of the leadership class; the political imperative of independence may very well trump the obviously high short-term risks of chaos; the Iraqi people place a very high value on stability, and rightly so, but the force of national self-determination can become irresistible in an atmosphere of foreign occupation, and reason is sometimes the loser in that contest. Ask the Hungarians in 1956. Ask the Palestinians today

3. This means that the US Army will probably be obliged to leave Iraq before Bush, Rumsfeld & Company are prepared to manage the retreat as if it were a triumphant event for freedom; the Americans will therefore be seen by the rest of the world, and particularly the Muslim world, in much the same light as were the Israelis when they departed from Southern Lebanon ---as a frustrated and defeated occupation force expelled by victorious nationalists; this will make many Americans who supported the "liberation" of Iraq extremely angry and resentful; the British and other members of the glorious "coalition of the willing" will effectively have to make the best of a bad situation --- if they haven't wisely removed themselves from the scene in the meanwhile;

4. All of which makes the probabilities of chaos and civil war in Iraq next year even higher than we pessimists have been predicting. (UNLESS the "expulsion" of the American "occupiers" serves to unify Iraqis and restore their sense of national unity and common purpose; my fear is that this would be only a temporary triumph at best; historic divisions and rivalries would very soon resurface, and chaos would pick up where it left off.)

Ray Close is the former CIA Station Chief for Saudi Arabia.

[Sticky Blue]

Seeing the way the new top man in Fallujah was greeted, it might just work. Hopefully long enough for our lads to get out and then they can do whatever they want!!

[jclark20000]

Think it will go totally wrong because as soon as power is handed back and the troops go the whole country will be in total mayhem.

[Frank S.]

If Iraqis can provide security for themselves (and that's a big, big IF), more and more of them will use Fallujah as an example and push even harder for the Coalition to leave Iraq.
Let's just see whether Saleh attempts to disarm Fallujah and how that goes if he does.

[Guest]

I think as soon as all the coalition forces are out of the country,and the iraqi`s are reinstated,give it a few months and you may well see another military coup, just my personal view.

[Frank S.]

Ooops... Okay, Saleh is out. Gen. Latif is in as replacement.

For now.

[Guest]

on the other hand, it could end up like Iran, If one of the clerics got a little too power crazy.

[Jordiman]

I think the US is lining Abu Hamza up to be the new Iraqi President.

[Frank S.]

It appears Hussain al-Shahristani (member of the IGC and aide to Ayatollah Sistani) is pulling out his marbles and will not accept a nomination to prime minister for the June 30 deadline.
Instead, another Shi'ite, and Gucci exile, Iyad Allawi is slated for the post.

[davo141]

i think Fallujah is a good example, little seems to of been heard since that Iraqi Corp went in...maybe this could be a case to come? as more and more colation patrols etc..are joined with Iraqis....hopefully, and a big IF it could work for the better...

i agree with the previous statement that it wont be long before an armed coup is on our screens! unfortuently it will be our boys sent back!

cheers, davo