Great in depth Iraq discussion in a bloggingheads between Juan Cole and Daniel Drezner. A few interesting points, mostly from Cole:
- Withdrawal is basically a decolonization situation in Iraq.
- Aside from U.S. presence in Iraq, U.S. and Iran both want a stable Shi’a led Iraq.
- The Iranians work with all the Shi’a factions and a few of the Kurdish ones dating back to their anti-Saddam alliance.
- It’s difficult to base in Kurdistan because if things got hot between Kurdistan and Turkey, we lose our main access point via Turkey.
- We need a plan for Iraqis who worked with the U.S. According to Dan Drezner, Sen. Clinton has talked about that, good for her. Juan Cole said we may be talking about 300k people in need of asylum.
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