Soon the soldiers broke into open mutiny.

[seemslikeadream]

http://www.counterpunch.org/

.....

In 1917 the French commander General Robert Nivelle proudly announced “we have the formula for victory” before launching the French armies on a catastrophic offensive in which they were massacred. Units ordered to the front brayed like donkeys to show they saw themselves as being like animals led to the slaughter. Soon the soldiers broke into open mutiny.
......


The US dilemma in Iraq goes back to the Gulf War. It wanted to be rid of Saddam Hussein in 1991 but not at the price of the Shia replacing him, something they were bound to do in fair elections because they are 60 per cent of the population. Worse, the Shia coming to power would have close relations with Iran, America’s arch-enemy in the Middle East. This was the main reason why the US did not press on to Baghdad after defeating Saddam Hussein’s armies in Kuwait in 1991. It then allowed him to savagely crush the Shia and Kurdish rebellions that briefly captured 14 out of 18 Iraqi provinces.

Ever since 2003 the US has wrestled with this same problem. Unwittingly the most conservative of American administrations had committed a revolutionary act in the Middle East by overthrowing the minority Sunni Baathist regime. The Bush family has always been close to the Saudi monarchy but George W Bush dismantled a cornerstone of the Sunni Arab security order. This is why the US and Britain opted for a thorough going occupation of Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein. They put off elections as long as they could. When elections were held in 2005 and voters overwhelmingly chose a Shia-Kurdish government Washington tried to keep it under tight control.

“The US and Britain have a policy of trying to fill the vacuum left by the Baath disappearing but it is unsuccessful,” says Ahmed Chalabi, out of office but still one of the most astute political minds in Iraq. “Now the Americans and British want to disengage but if they do so the worst fears of their Arab allies will come to pass: Shia control and strong Iranian influence in Iraq.”

The hidden history of the last four years is that the US wants to defeat the Sunni insurgents but does not want the Shia-Kurdish government to win a total victory. It props up the Iraqi state with one hand and keeps it weak with the other. The Iraqi intelligence service is not funded through the Iraqi budget but by the CIA.

Iraqi independence is far more circumscribed than the outside world realizes. The US is trying to limit the extent of the Shia-Kurdish victory, but by preventing a clear winner emerging in the struggle for Iraq Washington is ensuring that this vicious war goes on with no end in sight.

[roamer65]

1. To quote Gen. Smedley Butler.

"WAR IS A RACKET."