Yoshie writes:
One option for Washington is to retreat into the Iraqi Kurdish region in Iraq...The rest of Iraq may possibly break down into a Sunni region and a Shi'i region...As long as Washington can't stomach the idea of Tehran taking the Shi'i South, though, it will have to stay in Iraq, no matter how costly or bloody.
========================== You should consider, though, that the war has already proved too "costly and bloody" for the US, and that the decision has been made to withdraw the bulk of its forces from Iraq over the next one to two years. Most Republicans as well as Democrats incline towards the use of air power and special forces based in the Kurdish region and across the border in Kuwait and Jordan to launch raids against targets inside Iraq. The targets will depend on how the situation evolves; the US is trying to split both the Shias and the Sunnis, and the alliances aren't yet clear. The US does seem resigned to living with a Shia-controlled south. They don't have much choice, which is why there is so much bipartisan sighing in Washington about "no good options".
But the maintenance of an occupation army has become untenable, IMO, and the Baker group was predictably commissioned to devise a formula to somehow make the defeat look less like defeat.
