Meanwhile, over there
by digby
You have to wonder if this is for real:
Residents of a town north of Baghdad found 12 corpses with execution-style bullet wounds on Monday, after fighting between rival Sunni insurgent groups that could eventually unravel the coalition that seized much of the north and west of the country.
The incident points to an intensification of infighting between the Islamic State and other Sunni groups, such as supporters of former dictator Saddam Hussein, which rallied behind the al Qaeda offshoot last month because of shared hatred for the Shi'ite-led government in Baghdad.
Police in Muqdadiya, a town 80 km (50 miles) northeast of the capital, said residents from the nearby town of Saadiya found the 12 corpses on Monday after intense fighting overnight between Islamic State fighters and the Naqshbandi Army, a group led by Saddam allies.
Since the Islamic State swept through Iraqi cities and proclaimed its leader caliph of all Muslims last month, there have been increasing signs of conflict with other Sunni groups who do not necessarily share the al Qaeda offshoot's rejection of Iraq's borders or its severe interpretation of Islam.
Washington, which recruited other Sunni fighters to defeat al Qaeda during the U.S. surge offensive in 2006-2007, hopes other Sunnis will again turn against the Islamic State and can be lured back into a power-sharing government in Baghdad.
So, are we to assume that Washington might see this as good news? Or are we just talking about chaos/fog of war that adds up to more killing? It's very hard to tell from the article.
According to Dick Cheney, the Bush administration left Iraq in tip-top shape and it's all gone to hell in a handbasket because Obama is the anti-Christ. (Actually Obama would agree to some extent that he "failed" because, try as he might, he wasn't able to persuade the Maliki Government to deep-six the Bush-Cheney status of forces agreement which called for a total pull-out...)In any case the "who lost Iraq" argument is being fully engaged and if earlier "who lost...?" debates are a guide we're not going to see it resolved any time soon.
Meanwhile, the death and destruction continues. Cheney's convenient historical revision notwithstanding, we can probably all agree that the likelihood of this happening without the US invasion is nil. We broke it and we paid for it, but it's well and truly shattered.
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