Predicting Iraq's future: The grim truth

Gen. Tony McPeak (retired): The worst case? Iraq's Sunnis begin to be backed into a corner, then the Sunni governments -- Jordan, Saudi Arabia -- jump in. Israel sees that it's threatened by these developments. Once the Israelis get involved, then everybody piles on. And you've got nuclear events going off in the Middle East. That would be about as bad as it could get.

Rolling Stone has put together a panel of experts to talk about Iraq, how we (the United States) have lost the war, and what will probably happen over the next five to ten years.

The resulting report is not an analysis by a Rolling Stone journalist. It's a cobbled-together collection of verbatim opinions and predictions by experts from the military, foreign policy, and academic worlds, including:

Zbigniew Brzezinski
National security adviser to President Carter

Richard Clarke
Counterterrorism czar from 1992 to 2003

Nir Rosen
Author of In the Belly of the Green Bird, about Iraq?s spiral into civil war, speaking from Cairo, where he has been interviewing Iraqi refugees

Gen. Tony McPeak (retired)
Member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the Gulf War

Bob Graham
Former chair, Senate Intelligence Committee

Chas Freeman
Ambassador to Saudi Arabia during the Gulf War; president of the Middle East Policy Council

Paul Pillar
Former lead counterterrorism analyst for the CIA

Michael Scheuer
Former chief of the CIA?s Osama bin Laden unit; author of Imperial Hubris

Juan Cole
Professor of modern Middle East history at the University of Michigan

What they have to say is honest, and alarming. But we have to accept what these folks are saying: We've lost the war, we've exacerbated social tensions in that part of the world, and the best we can hope for is, frankly, quite depressing.

The Rolling Stone report is called Leaving Iraq: The Grim Truth and is a must-read for anyone who is concerned about what's going on in Iraq.

That is, everyone.


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