Take it way, Tom Barnett

Barnett points us to several articles, one by Friedman that's, IMO, only half as behind the curve as is his usual, and another about a report assessing Anbar, by Thomas Ricks for Wapo: "it's realistic," "it's candid," "it says the emperor has no clothes." In other words, the wet blanket in Washington is no longer snuffing out the flames in field commanders heads and hearts. A good read.

Barnett adds some of his own here

Getting real on the fake state that was Iraq

...

The patience of the Shiia, our most valued asset in Iraq, eventually evaporated. Now the fight is full-blown between Sunni and Shiia, and despite all the papering-over WRT Lebanon, that's still a defining characteristic of potential and real and future violence in the region.

I know Graham Fuller, former vice chair of the National Intell Council, says you can easily oversell the Sunni-Shiia split, and I agree to a certain extent--so long as Israel's kept up front in the debate. But in Iraq, Israel doesn't matter, and there we see the true implications of Vali Nasr's description of the Shiia revival.

It was fear of that revival that has driven me, since the fall of 2004, to argue for some sort of rapprochment with Iran.

If we lose the Shiia in the region, the potential for internecine war there is significant, and when that happens, as it's happening in Iraq today, we'll lose more than the Sunni triangle.

To me, that's what is so frightening about the "stay the course," deer-in-the-headlights look we're getting from W. right now. Forget strategic imagination. I just want some clear sense of strategic diagnosis. [empahsis mine]

And a crash cart, STAT.