US Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad says “the crisis is over,” after watching the country teeter all weekend on the brink of explosive civil war.
But few others are so sure. Since the golden dome was blown off the Shiite’s Samarra shrine last Wednesday, Baghdad’s main morgue has filled with hundreds of bodies — shot, knifed and strangled, execution-style.
If the slide continues, if the fury mounts, the horror at the morgue could look minor. Full-blown civil war scenarios are now only too imaginable — mass ethnic cleansing, religious battle-lines and national break-up, regional meltdown and US troops stuck in the middle, or running.
Hear about the all-too possible civil war scenarios in Iraq.
-Tom Ashbrook
Guests:
Borzou Daragahi, Baghdad correspondent, The Los Angeles Times.
Anthony Cordesman, Arleigh A. Burke Chair in Strategy, Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Daniel Byman, Director of the Security Studies Program and the Center for Peace and Securities Studies, Georgetown University. He is author of “Deadly Connections: States that Sponsor Terrorism.”
Mark Mazzetti, Pentagon reporter, The Los Angeles Times.
Peter Galbraith, Senior Diplomatic Fellow at the Center for Arms Control and Nonproliferation, author of the forthcoming book “The End of Iraq: How the United States Unintentionally Broke Up Iraq and Changed the Middle East.”
