The Baghdad regime disolved and vanished... amid the looting and chaos, there was talk of 'catastrophic success'... the hawks felt vindicated, and the USG spoke with a renewed faith in the efficacy of violence...
April 22, 2003: Iraq: Phase 2: Hot Potato...
But hold on... what's that freaky sound ... is that Pandora's thing creaking open? Leaving sooner starts to look smarter, but it's starting to look more and more difficult to turn Iraq over to anyone but the Shiias- the majority after all. But did the US drive out Saddam only to pave the way for an Islamic Shiite Iraq? (see Washington Post April 22: U.S. Planners Surprised by Strength of Iraqi Shiites)
This brings to mind one of the more out-there theories arising spontaneously from the curious facts of the matter... that the fake intel provided the US and delivered by Powell to the UN was not from the Israelis, but from some element in the Saudi ruling family. By this logic, the Saudis would get America to oust Saddam, and with that the justification for the US keeping bases in Saudi Arabia. The "hard" version of this theory intertwines that motivation with another, which seeks to oust Saddam in order to open Iraq up to Islamic radicalism and Islamic statehood. This 2nd party in this scenario may have been our nemesis UBL himself.
Another version, which seems to me the more likely, has the Iranians behind the same ploy, and argues they will be the ultimate beneficiaries of a Shiite Islamic Iraq, and have the capacity for pervasive influence in the process.
American people tend to suspect the war is about oil and projection of power; it may be for the American leaders- but this is well known to those who aim to withstand the American riposte and even profit from it... and what appear to us as the "real reasons" for the war may be, to the hypothesized aforementioned parties, the bait.
