Karen DeYoung and Thomas E. Ricks have a piece in the Washington Post today that takes a closer look at what the military has determined to be the probable fall-out from a rapid U.S. withdrawal in Iraq. They quote retired Marine Col. Gary Anderson, who says "I honestly don't think it will be apocalyptic...[but] it will be ugly."
From there the authors counter that
In making the case for a continued U.S. troop presence, President Bush has offered far more dire forecasts, arguing that al-Qaeda or Iran -- or both -- would take over Iraq after a "precipitous withdrawal" of U.S. forces. Al-Qaeda, he said recently, would "be able to recruit better and raise more money from which to launch their objectives" of attacking the U.S. homeland.
Really? Far more dire? But the authors state that the war games "predicted that Iran would intervene on one side of a Shiite civil war and would become bogged down in southern Iraq." Furthermore, they add that regarding al Qaeda, "U.S. intelligence analysts...have a somewhat different view...noting that the local branch takes its inspiration but not its orders from bin Laden. Its enemies--the overwhelming majority of whom are Iraqis--reside in Baghdad and Shiite-majority areas of Iraq, not in Saudi Arabia or the United States."
So the games predict Iranian movement into Iraq and that al Qaeda in Iraq--which takes its inspiration from the folks who brought us 9/11--are likely to confine themselves to slaughtering the locals following an American withdrawal. But what if they become inspired to do otherwise? It seems the only real difference between Bush's rhetoric and the conclusions of these war games is that the intelligence community is less inclined to believe that al Qaeda will follow American troops home...and that's nothing more than a best guess. The war games don't predict the apocalypse, but is that really the standard for a withdrawal...anything less than the apocalypse will do just fine?
