Robert Christian on Iraq | National Catholic Reporter

Robert Christian on Iraq | National Catholic Reporter by MSW.  MGB: Yes and no.  He was sold something by Cheney and Rumsfeld.  They thought this would be easy, but once they tore out the Baath Party, it became impossible.  In the end, I hope that ISIS is more Baathist than al Queda.  If it is the latter, then I hope we are quietly arming the Sunni leaders to repeat what they did while we were putting on the show of a surge.  I suspect, however, that some of those leaders are being killed off in revenge for 2007.  Oddly enough, our best hope is with Iranians to contain this mess to the Sunni region.  As for Syria, there was no aid because we could not separate the wheat from the chaff in the opposition.  The chaff won, but at least we did not arm it (at least I hope not). The only really creative thing we can do is massively yet quietly aid King Abdullah so that he can assert his legitimate claim to be Calilph (which may frighten Israel, but that may be a good thing too). Our dreams of Middle East democracy need to be abandonned now.