Here is another piece to stimulate thought.

What Future For Iraq
By Garth Dutton

The famous Czech novelist
Milan Kundera said that
events succeed each other
so quickly these days
people soon forget…

Forgotten now is the Iraq Hostage Crisis
that preceded the first Gulf War.
As soon as the last hostage was released,
forty days & nights
of saturation bombing began.

Forgotten too
is the hotshot American pilot
who ‘blew away’ the leading British tanks
as they swept unopposed through the desert
in an arc towards the Euphrates,
intending to cut off the entire Iraqi army in Kuwait.
Instead of achieving
the greatest tactical victory in military history,
the British Army ‘downed tools’
at even the concept of ‘friendly fire’,
so allowing the entire Republican Guard
to escape with all their tanks.
Saddam Hussein remained in power
till overthrown twelve years later
in the second Gulf War.
A war that is still going on in November 2008.

And do you remember the Iran/Iraq war?
Iraq still stands
between the Mullahs of Tehran
and Mecca, the holiest place in Islam.
The Mullahs regard the Saudi Royal Family
as one of the most corrupt regimes
the world has ever known,
and it is charge of Mecca.
An Iranian student at high school here
once said to me,
“Iran’s Shi’ites have the clergy,
so they should run Mecca.”

In Iraq at the moment,
relations between Shi’ites and Sunnis
are rather like relations were
between Protestant and Catholic
in Northern Ireland
till quite recent times.

Is there no end to the turmoil in Iraq?

Is there no end indeed…