Iraq In Fragments

• Apparently, those damn bookkeepers are to blame for the loss of hundreds of thousands of AK-47s which could be in the hands of insurgents. You may recall this excuse from when Paul Bremer used it to explain the missing $8 billion dollars of reconstruction money. Maybe they should hire some better number crunchers! David Petraeus peddled this line on Alan Colmes show; I guess that means he's ready for tough, biting interviews now.

• Iraqi oil unions are claiming that their voices are being suppressed in exactly the same way Saddam Hussein suppressed them back in the 1980s.

Iraq's new constitution, passed in 2005, enshrines "the right of forming and joining professional associations and unions", and promises that "this will be organised by law".

But since no such legislation has been passed, campaigners say the oil ministry is simply reverting to Saddam-era laws that banned unions.

Freedom.

• Basra is a complete mess, as competing Shiite factions have filled the vaccuum created when Great Britain left and are battling for supremacy. Some may read this as an ominous sign of what may come if and when the United States leaves the country. I say that it may well be the case. But somebody has to explain to me how the military PRESENCE has stopped chaos from happening, before I start worrying about the absence.

• Dolschtoss rears its ugly head again, this time from some winger retired Air Force Colonel who's only been to Iraq on a dog-and-pony show.

• Apparently, Robert Gates figured out that Shiites and Sunnis don't often like one another.

• Finally, the Center for American Progress has put together the ultimate Friedman Unit handbook, a compendium of every "we've got 6 months left to win this thing" statement ever made about Iraq, some of which begin as early as July 2003. Fine work by CAP.

UPDATE: Thers lays it out, and this is why I can only view Iraq in fragments nowadays, because the big picture is too horrific to contemplate.

I'm not sure how much more clearly it can be put. The situation in Iraq is impossible. The Surge cannot last forever -- all it can do is postpone the inevitable. We can push down the cork for only so long: the bottle is going to blow, sooner or later.

The fundamental dynamic in Iraq is sectarian violence. The best case scenario is a culturally repressive Shiite theocracy with generally friendly relations with Iran hopefully tempered to some degree by latent nationalism, a suppressed and resentful Sunni minority who can only be suppressed militarily but will still probably always have access to weapons, and an essentially autonomous Kurdish state that avoids war with Turkey and Iran only by virtue of constant ingenious international brinksmanship and a shitload of luck. Finally, as the Sunnis will always be aggrieved and furious, they will always be tempted to turn to... international terrorist organizations who can supply them with weapons. If Al Qaeda in Iraq is ejected tomorrow, something similar will eventually be invited back in.

And you know what the United States can do about this?

Sweet fuck-all.

The lieutenant colonel's op-ed that provided Thers' launching pad can be viewed here. I can't wait to see the Bush apologists claim that the soldier made it all up.