Quote:
Originally posted by Sidd Finch
Our faithful ally Maliki says that "The United States could dramatically and quickly cut its troop presence in Iraq if it provided enough weapons to the country's security forces."
Should we believe him?
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Depends on the result we want.
On the upside, we wouldn't have to worry about the Sunni insurgency or Al Qaeda in Iraq much longer.
On the downside, the Iranian Republican Guard would probably be openly (rather than covertly -- as now) training Iraqis and shipping volunteers off to Lebanon for service with Hezbollah.
S_A_M
P.S. Lt. Gen. (Ret) Oden -- past head of the NSA, had an interesting perspective on this in a recent NPR interview I heard.
He said that our invasion of Iraq has certainly promoted one form of terrorism (i.e. the Iranian/Iraqi/Hezbollah connection) which did not exist under Hussein and which he says was inevitable as soon as we overthrew him.
He also said that the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq (which I get the impression he doesn't favor at this time) would have the benefit of effectively eliminating Al Qaeda in Iraq because, while they are presently coordinating with some Sunni/Baathist insurgents to fight Americans, _every_ group in Iraq has scores to settle with Al Qada in Iraq and will do so as soon as possible, because those guys are killing lots of Iraqis.
