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Iraq: The prognosis couldn't be worse

Those who consider these matters in detail, there seems little doubt that the Iraq War is a disaster - and getting worse nothwithstanding the recently announced "surge". Needless to say the politicians keep telling the public that things either are or will get better. It's hard to see how that might be as the daily news out of Iraq seems quite the contrary.

Now the respected Chatham House has weighed in with its assessment, as the Spiegel on Line reports:

"The highly respected UK think tank Chatham House on Thursday issued a dire report on the situation in Iraq. The country may be on the verge of becoming a failed state, says the study. Meanwhile, the US says things aren't that bad.

It hardly qualifies as breaking news anymore when a think tank comes out with a report saying that Iraq is in trouble. But rarely has a study been as scathing as that released on Thursday by the widely respected British foreign policy organization Chatham House. Iraq, the report says bluntly, is on the verge of "collapse and fragmentation."

The report argues that it is time to take a sober look at the realities in the country four years after the US-led invasion and to model future policy on a true understanding of the challenges presented. And according to the study, those challenges are many: the existence of multiple civil wars in the country between many different actors; a fracturing of the country into regional power bases; control of oil; a ripping apart of the social fabric; and the lack of authority in the hands of the Iraqi government among other, equally vexing problems."

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